


Asymmetry

by candlemaker



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Dubious Science, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Tony Stark friendly but he gets better, Not realising you're in love until you meet your married parallel selves, Parallel Universes, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Rating May Change, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 46,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24577945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candlemaker/pseuds/candlemaker
Summary: “Isn’t that weird?” Sam starts, raising an eyebrow at Bucky’s parallel self.“Sam-“ Bucky tries to interject, looking increasingly distressed – but it’s no use.“I mean, you third wheeling Steve and his wife out here in the middle of nowhere?” Sam finishes, and Bucky can only cover his face with his metal hand and wish the ground would swallow him whole, knowing what is coming as surely as he has ever known anything.“Pal,” the Other Bucky replies with a smirk, holding up his flesh hand to show off a thin silver band while the real Bucky stares resolutely at the ground, “I am his wife.”OrOf all the parallel universes they could have ended up in, Bucky can't think of a worse one than this - one that serves as a constant reminder of everything he's ever wanted, and everything he can't ever have.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 200
Kudos: 672





	1. Prologue

A few short weeks after his return to New York from Wakanda, Fury had appeared on his doorstep like a bad omen.

With a new arm and a freshly clear mind thanks to Shuri, he had moved into a modest apartment in Brooklyn with Steve, his amnesty and that of all Steve’s friends who found themselves in the Raft now secured, thanks to a newly established SHIELD legal team. As Bucky’s memories began to return to him in more frequent bursts, he and Steve had fallen back into the easy camaraderie of their pre-war apartment – the last real home they had.

Sam had moved to New York too, and had settled a few blocks away, close enough for his daily runs with Steve and to continue volunteering at the local VA. While Sam and Steve focused on working with Fury to rebuild SHIELD from the ground up, HYDRA now supposedly purged from its ranks, Bucky had been tasked with focusing on his own recovery. He had yet to figure out what ‘focusing on his recovery’ actually meant, but it seemed to involve an awful lot of recounting the worst of what HYDRA did to him to strangers with too many degrees on their wall. It had yet to provide any concrete results for him either, such as easing the constant, soul-crushing guilt that weighed down on him or allowing him to sleep more than a few hours a night, but the proud smile on Steve’s face whenever he returned from a therapy session made it all worth it.

In a lot of ways, it was familiar: waking up with Steve only a few rooms away; falling asleep knowing someone was watching his six; reading on the couch and listening to the sound of Steve’s pencil against his sketch book. Longing to curl into Steve’s arms, or follow him into bed and pull the covers over both of them to block out the rest of the world.

Resisting those urges for the sake of their friendship, and to make sure he never, ever had to see rejection or disgust in those ocean blue eyes.

Life in their little apartment sometimes felt like an echo of the memories he had recovered, from before. In those brief moments, he could forget the war and ice and death that had separated them for so long, and pretend he and Steve were still back in their shitty Brooklyn apartment, never to be parted.

But outside of those bubbles of nostalgia was an almost entirely unfamiliar world. The sounds and smells of the city were different, and he was trying to catch up with a whole new world of technology – if it couldn’t be used to kill someone, HYDRA hadn’t bother to teach it to him. While his relationship with Steve was strong, and growing stronger as his memories of their lives together slowly returned to him, there were differences there, too. Before, Bucky had always been the one with the big family and large friend group. Now, he relied on Steve entirely, much like Steve had once relied on him when he was small and sick. It was Steve, now, with connections and relationships – Sam, Natasha, Clint, Wanda, Thor - 

They don’t discuss Tony. The knowledge that it was Bucky who had driven a wedge between Tony and Steve; who had forced Steve to nearly kill his friend; who had murdered Howard, _their_ friend, was nearly too much for him to bear.

He had barely begun settling into this new, unfamiliar New York when Fury had showed up unannounced on their doorstep, manilla folder with ‘CLASSIFIED’ stamped across it in hand. When Bucky had ducked into the other room to give Fury and Steve some privacy, a deep voice had stopped him in his tracks.

“Not so fast, Barnes,” Fury had addressed him, leaning around Steve to meet Bucky’s eye with his own piercing gaze, “This one’s for you.”

* * *

Despite his reservations about trusting SHIELD, Bucky had accepted a solo mission from Fury to take out a small HYDRA cell that had recently reared its head in Alaska, and he and Steve had fought bitterly into the night about it. Steve had pleaded with him not to go; begging him to think about the disruption to his so-called ‘recovery’; to think about the danger of carrying out a mission solo; to see himself as something other than a weapon to be pointed at a target by others.

But Bucky’s desire to see HYDRA crushed beneath his heel had just about outweighed his distrust of Fury, and realistically, there was no one else who could complete the missions Fury brought to him like Bucky could.

A disciplined soldier like Sam didn’t have the aim of a marksman. A marksman like Clint didn’t have the strength of a super soldier. A super soldier like Steve didn’t have the stealth of an assassin. And an assassin like Natasha didn’t have the in-depth knowledge of HYDRA bases and operations that Bucky did.

Ignoring Steve’s reservations, and confident in his own abilities to carry off the mission, Bucky had taken out that first HYDRA cell with practised ease and more than a little genuine pleasure. He had agreed to take on several more missions for Fury, but had stopped short of allowing himself to become a SHIELD agent.

He works for himself, now, and no one else.

After establishing a routine over the course of months – solo missions for Fury, trying to catch up on 70 years of popular culture, getting to know Sam for Steve’s sake, and suffering through therapy sessions – Bucky had not been surprised when he received a call from Fury, asking him to come into the new SHIELD offices.

He was surprised, however, when Fury asked him to bring Steve, too.

At the uncharacteristic urgency in Fury’s voice, Bucky had dragged Steve out of bed and onto his motorcycle, careful not to dwell on the feeling of Steve pressed up against his back, arms tight around his waist. They had joined Sam and Clint at the conference table as Fury had given them a disarmingly simple mission: infiltrate a possible HYDRA base that had recently come onto SHIELD’s radar.

“We’re picking up strange energy signals,” Fury had told them, frustratingly vague as usual, “I have people looking into it, but they’re not making much progress remotely. We need bodies on the ground to investigate.”

At that, Bucky had felt a stab of fear run through him – _did he mean…? If he was forced to work with a man who wanted him dead, whose parents he had killed -_

“People looking into it…” Steve had echoed, stiffening ever so slightly just as Bucky had, “Meaning Stark?”

To Bucky’s immense relief, Fury had shaken his head, speaking directly to Steve as if Bucky wasn’t even there.

“He’s still not willing to work with Barnes, and honestly, Barnes’ insight into HYDRA makes him a more valuable asset than Stark right now.”

Bucky had barely suppressed his flinch at being referred to as an ‘Asset’, and Steve’s hands had balled into fists at his sides, but Fury had continued as if nothing was amiss.

“If you can’t find anything, we’ll have to bring him in. But for now, you’re on your own.”

“Natasha?” Clint had asked, but Fury had shook his head once again,

“Natasha, Wanda and Scott are tied up in Bucharest. Thor is off-world, Banner is off the grid. But you shouldn’t need them. This is a simple, in-and-out job,” Fury had assured them, meeting each of their eyes in turn and receiving terse nods in response.

 _Simple_ , Bucky thought to himself, mindlessly flicking through the pages of the mission file as preparations carried on around him, _why does everything always go to shit when they tell you it’ll be simple?_


	2. The Mission

It was a small base, they’d been told. No more than a dozen guards. A strong energy signal was coming from a central lab, deep in the heart of the compound. Likely generated by some kind of machinery, but like nothing the SHIELD technicians had ever seen before. Possibly not of this earth, whatever that means.

Bucky had approached first, a little before dusk, from their position just outside the gates. He had watched with delight as the guards had dispersed exactly as he had predicted after several long nights of recon, ready to be picked off to allow the team safe entry into the HYDRA base. Grateful for the jet black of his new Wakandan arm, he had weaved through the shadows, holding himself with an unnatural stillness that only someone who spent 70 years as a machine could achieve, and enacted his plan seamlessly. A knock-out gas canister slipped through the window of the guards' hut to the west, a dart in the neck of the two patrolling HYDRA officers, a knife through the throat of those guarding the back entrance. Simple, clean, efficient. Bucky feels the edges of the other man they put inside of him tugging at the edges of his consciousness when he works like this, erecting a glass barrier between him and the world that makes him numb, emotionless.

But he doesn’t let himself slip too far. He’s scared that if he does, he’ll never find his way out.

When he was done, he’d called for the others, and Steve had been at his side impossibly fast as Clint and Sam had taken the higher ground and settled onto the roof of the compound.

As they moved through the twisting corridors of the base, they fit together like two puzzle pieces; Steve taking point ( _but without his shield, now, which is probably still in that Siberian bunker_ ), Bucky with his gun held firm in a measured grip just behind him. It had been decades since he had worked with a team he trusted like this, but with Clint and Sam watching their backs and Steve by his side, nostalgia for the Howlies burst within him almost painfully. He couldn’t help wondering if Steve felt it too, when he fought with the Avengers. Whether, before Bucky came back to him, he would ever think about the perfect pair they made, fighting like one person, almost reading each other’s thoughts.

They make their way towards the centre of the compound with ease, and meet no resistance. Everything is going perfectly according to plan, in fact. Which is why Bucky knows everything is about to go wrong.

“Guys, something’s happening,” Clint’s voice breaks through the silence over their earpieces, and Bucky almost sighs at how awful his luck is, “Something’s alerted the guards.”

“They can’t know we’re here,” Bucky replies in disbelief, keeping his tone low to avoid giving away their position as he and Steve share a look, “I disabled their alarm system, the cameras are looping old footage, we took out the exterior guard posts and there won’t be a guard rotation for another hour.”

“Well, they’re headed right for you,” Clint tells them urgently, “Better get out of there unless you’re looking for fight.”

Between two super soldiers, half a dozen HYDRA goons stood no chance, but it would be safer to meet them out in the open than to be caught in a narrow corridor, outnumbered and on HYDRA’s home turf. Swearing to himself, Bucky throws his carefully laid plans to the wind and retreats down the corridor they came from, Steve pressed tightly to his side as they move.

“Dammit, what could have triggered their defences?” Steve asks Bucky in frustration as they step outside into the night air, but before either of them can hazard a guess, Sam’s voice cuts through the static of their comms.

“Cap, Barnes, you’ve got company,” Sam tells them hastily, “Approaching your six now.”

“The helping hand kind of company or the _this-mission-is-about-to-go-to-shit_ kind of company?” Bucky asks, already cocking his rifle as Sam takes a long, tense pause.

“Not sure,” He says eventually, and then: “It’s Stark.”

Dread pumps through him as he meets Steve’s eye, and the horribly familiar sound of thrusters makes itself known as Tony slows to a hover above them. Instinctively, Steve puts his body between Bucky and Tony, hesitating when he notices what Stark is holding.

In his left hand, he’s grasping Steve’s shield – the same one Tony had demanded he leave behind after they had nearly killed each other in Siberia.

_You don’t deserve it. My father made that shield._

Bucky’s whole body is tensed for a fight, and he can see that Steve’s is too. But god, he’s tired. He wishes, not for the first time, that he had just taken whatever punishment Tony had for him back in Siberia, be it prison or death. After everything he’s done, he deserves it. And Howard was a friend – a good friend. His son deserves some justice.

But to their surprise, Tony simply tosses the shield to Steve like a Frisbee. Steve catches it easily with a bewildered expression, staring down at it like it’s a grenade with the pin pulled.

“Is this a peace offering?” Steve asks hesitantly, and it’s decidedly the wrong thing to say. The wire thin tension snaps, and Tony snaps with it, letting his thrusters disengage so he lands in front of Steve. In his peripheral vision, Bucky sees Sam and Clint edging closer from their position on the roof across from them, as unsure of what to expect from Tony as he and Steve are.

Tony flicks his visor open, and the bitter rage in his eyes as he meets Bucky’s hesitant gaze makes him wish he’d never agreed to this mission. He does his best work alone, anyway.

“You want me to make a peace offering, like I’m the one in the wrong here?” Tony asks incredulously, his eyes snapping back to Steve as if he can’t bear to look at Bucky and side eyeing the shield like he is debating taking it back, “You’re the one who broke the law, for a mass murderer no less-“

“He’s not responsible for anything HYDRA made him do!” Steve seethes, squaring up to the Iron Man suit while Bucky simply hangs his head, hoping desperately this won’t result in another fight like Siberia, “You’re responsible for nearly killing an innocent man, and sending our friends to an underwater prison with no trial, though.”

“Innocent? Did you really just refer to Terminator there as-“

“OKAY,” Sam cuts across loudly, flying from the roof to land in front of them. Intentionally placing himself in between Tony and Steve and raising his hands placatingly, he adds: “We’ve done this already, and it ended in loss of limbs, y’all nearly killing each other, and previously mentioned underwater prisons. Forgive me if I don’t wanna do this again.”

“Also,” Clint adds, appearing over the side of the roof and pointing an explosive-tipped arrow over their shoulders, “the guards?”

In the midst of their argument, they’d forgotten the whole reason they retreated to the courtyard in the first place, and the HYDRA guards that must have been alerted by Tony are nearly upon them. Turning swiftly, Steve throws his newly received shield up just in time to block a hit destined for Bucky’s chest, just as Clint lets loose a volley of arrows from above. Tony and Sam raise themselves into the sky once again, taking out two of the newly arrived guards as Bucky lashes out with his metal arm, pushing one clean through the compound wall. The fighting is over in seconds, but Bucky has a sinking feeling that the argument won’t be resolved quite so easily.

“See,” Tony tells Steve smugly as he picks off the last, unfortunate guard with a repulsor blast, “You can’t handle yourself without me.”

“You alerted them!” Steve hisses furiously through gritted teeth, “You showed up on their radar – this was meant to be a stealth mission!”

“Well, I didn’t know the parameters of the mission,” Tony snaps back, landing with a _clunk_ once again, “because no one bothered to tell me about it!”

With a heavy sigh, Clint shimmies his way off the roof and down to their level, putting his remaining arrows back into his quiver now the coast is clear.

“Oh my god,” He groans, as Tony and Steve begin squaring up to each other once again and Bucky sinks deeper into the shadows of the courtyard, desperate to be anywhere but here, “We’re not doing this again. Can we just see what the stupid energy signals are all about?”

Silently grateful for his intervention, Bucky pulls at Steve’s arm gently until he backs down from Tony - _and wasn’t that something, getting Steve Rogers to back down from a fight_ – and they follow Clint inside, deeper into the compound than they had been before.

Sam follows, tucking his wings away and covering Steve and Bucky’s back, and after a few seconds of petulant silence, Tony follows too.

* * *

They retrace their steps, the building now eerily still, no one daring to speak for fear of igniting another argument. Bucky keeps as much distance from Tony as he can manage without breaking their formation, and Steve follows Bucky like a shadow, shielding him with his larger body as if he thinks Tony will take a shot at him if he gets a clear line of sight. They move deeper and deeper into the winding corridors of the compound, until they come across what they’ve been looking for: an innocuous door, labelled only with ‘CAUTION’. The strange energy signal they’ve been tracking should be directly beyond it.

It’s locked, however. As Steve rears back to give it a kick, Tony shoves him out of the way a little harder than necessary, melting the locking mechanism with his repulsors before Steve can even attempt it the old fashioned way. Steve levels a glare at the back of his head, and asks with no shortness of bitterness;

“How did you even find out about this mission?”

“You think I don’t monitor the SHIELD channels, after the shit that went down in D.C.?” Tony replies, sounding more than a little bitter himself, “Which, by the way, I wasn’t invited to either!”

Ignoring him, or perhaps not wanting to delve deeper into the events of D.C. in front of Bucky, Steve shoulder checks the now unlocked door until it swings open, revealing what initially appears to be a nondescript lab.

It’s darker in here than the rest of the compound, and Bucky can just make out a large, rectangular control panel, several tables with mechanical equipment and tools, and in the centre of the room, some kind of structure. The non-enhanced members of the team shuffle further into the room as their eyes adjust to the darkness, wary but curious. It’s still unclear what the structure is as they get closer, but it glows with a strange light that makes it almost painful to look at directly. With his enhanced vision, Bucky has troubling settling his eyes on it without squinting, and Steve is clearly having the same trouble beside him.

The structure appears to be a thin piece of wire, coiled around itself and stretching upwards into a shape that is roughly an archway, although it would be barely big enough to walk through. Whatever it is, it’s consistently emitting an ominous blue glow that sets Bucky’s teeth on edge at once. Sam, Steve and Tony are all drawn towards the archway, but like Bucky, Clint keeps his distance.

“The blue…” Clint starts, paling as he examines the glowing energy surrounding the structure, “It looks like the tesseract.”

Clint looks at the archway with the closest thing Bucky has ever seen to fear on his face, and he feels a sudden pang of empathy for the archer, remembering what he had read in the SHIELD files about Loki, the sceptre and the tesseract energy. No one knows better than Bucky what it’s like to be taken over, controlled, and weaponised – if they were standing in front of the Chair they had used on him, his reaction would be much less subtle than Clint’s. Clint’s dismay only lasts a few seconds, though, before he appears to shake it off and begins jabbing at the control panel beside them, trying to figure out how to turn the thing on.

“Woah, hey – I don’t think we should be messing with that,” Steve says, in his most _I’m disappointed in you_ Captain America voice, which only seems to urge Clint on.

“Oh come on,” Tony counters, just to be contrarian, “Weren’t we sent here to figure out what it does? How do you do that without messing with it a little?”

“We weren’t sent anywhere, Tony,” Steve snaps, “You aren’t part of this-“

“INITIATING,” announces a robotic female voice from within the control panel Clint is messing with. In front of them, the archway begins to glow with electricity, and Bucky flinches back instinctively, remembering the pain and terror associated with the lightning they used to pour into his head. He shakes the invasive thoughts of his captivity and the Chair away, trying to keep his head in the game as the glow intensifies. _Initiating what?_

“Oh,” Clint says in a pained voice, lifting both hands off the dashboard so he doesn’t trigger anything else, “My bad.”

Beside him, the others are edging away, but there’s something drawing Bucky closer, even with all the associations electricity holds for him. If he squints, he can see something through the archway, and not just the rest of the lab on the other side of it – figures, maybe? Shadows? There’s something _in_ there, he’s sure of it.

“Buck?” Steve asks with concern when Bucky takes a tentative step towards the archway, which is now sparking tendrils of fork lightning outwards like a Tesla coil. But his voice sounds strangely far away. There’s another voice, and if he listens closely enough he thinks he can almost make it out. It sounds, bizarrely, like an echo of his own laughter.

Suddenly, one of the tendrils of lightning strikes out directly towards him, striking him in the centre of his chest with precision. The almighty cracking sound that accompanies it unleashes a powerful ringing in his ears, and his vision flashes completely white, blinding him as his entire body tenses painfully. The last thing he registers is Steve’s horrified scream of his name, and a hand reaching out towards him.


	3. Arrival

When the white light fades, Steve is still reaching for him, blinking away the light behind his own eyes and furrowing his brow. As he blinks back into awareness, he drops his hand in confusion, not needing to pull Bucky out the way of a danger that seems to have disappeared.

The whole archway has disappeared. In fact, the whole lab – the whole HYDRA _base_ – seems to have disappeared. They are decidedly not several hundred feet underground in a concrete maze. Instead, Bucky can feel the sun on his skin and the wind fanning the edges of his hair; somehow, they’re outside in a dense forest, surrounded by trees.

For a second, Bucky is struck with the fear that this is the product of the memory issues that still plague him, courtesy of HYDRA. Has he forgotten them making it out of the base and venturing into the surrounding forest? Did he dissociate his way through their completion of the mission?

But Tony, Clint, Steve and Sam are in the clearing with him, and they all look as confused and disorientated as he feels. After years of being frozen and thawed out by HYDRA, he’s used to closing his eyes only to awaken in a new city or year or country – but it’s never been quite this sudden. Bucky’s whole body is vibrating with the aftershocks of the electricity, but he isn’t in the kind of pain he should be in – he’s taken enough electric shocks in his life to know what they feel like. Instead, he just feels warm and a little shaky. Clenching his fists to quell the trembling, he tries his best to return to his mission mindset and make sense of their new surroundings.

To his stark relief, Steve seems safe and in one piece; and not just the Steve in front of him, but the Steve in his mind, too. Bucky flicks through the pages of their life in his mind like a picture book, checking that he can still recall the fragments he has clawed back during his recovery; cotton candy and a dazzling smile of delight at Coney Island; grim determination in blue eyes in a muddy foxhole in darkest Europe; delicate artist's fingers clutching Becca Barnes chubby baby hand with adoration. However reminiscent those tendrils of lightning were of the Chair, his memories don't appear to have been stolen from him this time.

"What the hell?” Clint asks, disoriented, and Bucky is inclined to agree. Of all the things he had expected from getting too close to experimental HYDRA technology – pain or death or both – their sudden appearance on an idyllic woodland trail hadn’t been one of them.

“Did we just teleport?” Sam is patting himself down as if he’s checking that all his body parts teleported with him and weren’t left behind in the HYDRA lab, gazing incredulously at the tall pines surrounding them.

“It sure looks like it. Where the hell are we?” Tony rasps angrily, pulling off his helmet entirely and turning in a tight circle, staring upwards as if he will recognise the trees if he spins past them enough times.

Blinking dumbly up at the sky then down at the forest floor as they all are, Steve asks tentatively; “Can’t JARVIS track our position?”

Tony ceases his spinning and throws his arms wide, suddenly exasperated.

“You think I didn’t try that before I asked? He can’t access any local networks.”

“If your genius AI can’t tell us where we are, how do you expect me to know?”

“You’re right! You’ve been completely useless so far, so why would I expect that to change now?” Tony snaps back, petulant, and Sam levels his best _here we go again_ look at Bucky over Steve’s shoulder.

Bucky lets them fight it out, choosing to believe that right now, Steve isn’t in any real danger in the face of Tony’s anger. Instead, he focuses on analysing their surroundings and scanning for potential threats. They’re in a forest, but it looks more like a New England forest than those he’s trekked through in pursuit of a target in Brazil, Siberia or China. Perhaps they haven’t left the States – maybe not even the East coast, if the familiar weather is anything to go by. Whatever Clint activated might have only been a short range teleporter. Maybe they’re still in the area surrounding the HYDRA base? 

The last vestiges of daylight cling on as evening overtakes the forest, and although night in an unfamiliar setting brings its own set of dangers, Bucky eagerly awaits the appearance of the constellations. If JARVIS can’t help them, Bucky is more than capable of navigating by the stars to figure out their position.

“This never would have happened if I hadn’t been kept off this mission,” Tony continues, as Bucky examines their surroundings without ever turning his back on Stark, “I didn’t have all the information, I didn’t have time to do any research or planning-“

“That’s because you weren’t meant to be here!”, Steve exclaims, and _yep,_ _here we go again,_ “We’re perfectly capable of doing a mission without you-“

“Because this is going so well, huh?”

“If you hadn’t been there we would have been in and out within minutes, with stealth on our side, but you had to make your big dramatic entrance-“

“You wouldn’t know stealth if it bit you in your spandex covered ass, Rogers, you’re literally carrying a Frisbee with a target painted on it!”

Wherever they are, they aren’t alone. Over the bitter quips Tony and Steve are throwing at each other and Sam’s audible eye rolling, Bucky enhanced hearing picks up what Steve is too caught up to notice; something is approaching them from the east. He mentally blocks out his bickering team mates and tries to hone in on that sound with the skill afforded to him not just by the serum, but by nearly seventy years of experience as a sniper and assassin.

He can make out two sources of noise heading directly towards them, but remaining just out of sight in the tree cover. One is unsubtle, crunching leaves and branches underfoot and walking at a rapid pace, with a strange gait and loud, panting breathes – a guard dog, maybe? The other is barely within his range of hearing; though he can tell they are close, they move almost silently, keeping the noise from their footsteps to a minimum and holding their breath. A professional, then. Someone who knows how to avoid being seen – and someone who is trying to get the jump on them.

“You clearly don’t want to be here, so why bother? You couldn’t stand not being the centre of attention for long enough to sit out of one mission?”

“Why would I want to be here, with a traitor and the mass murderer who killed my parents? But I’m not being pushed out of SHIELD for him, I’m not gonna let you keep me in the dark and go over my head -”

“Oh my god, can you both stop for one minute? You’re giving me a migraine,” Clint begs, rubbing his temples with his fingers for added effect.

“Shouldn’t we be trying to figure out where we are and how the hell we got here instead of bickering like school children?” Sam adds, equally exasperated. The footsteps to the east are drawing ever closer, and Bucky’s eyes frantically scan the bush for signs of movement or shadows as he silently slides his sidearm out of its holster and flicks off the safety.

“There’s someone here,” He warns the others, but he goes unheard as Tony and Steve continue to fight and Sam and Clint throw their two cents into the argument. Whoever is in the forest with them doesn’t need to be anywhere near as stealthy as they’re being with the way the two men are carrying on – he’s pretty sure an elephant could run right up to them before Tony or Steve noticed anything was amiss _. Jesus, is he the only professional here?_

“Well excuse me if we have some unfinished business, what with Steve leaving me for dead in a Siberian bunker-“

“Oh my god. Are you ever gonna stop milking that?” Clint asks in despair, making Sam laugh a little hysterically in disbelief as Tony rounds on him next.

Bucky’s eyes track the position of the figures in the brush until they stop entirely, directly across from the group. He hears the rustle of leaves as the dog stops too, obediently waiting for their master to make a move. Stepping forward, Bucky puts himself directly between Steve and the source of the noise – if they wanted to take a shot they would have already done it, and they didn’t need to get this close, but he can’t take any chances. Behind him, Steve is still frustratingly unaware of his surroundings and the imminent danger, and is still trading bitter barbs with Tony.

“You’ve disrupted this mission enough, Tony, let’s just drop this for now. Besides, you were fully prepared to kill Bucky, and probably me, in that same bunker, so-“

The way the figure has suddenly stopped is unnerving, and Bucky is about to raise his sidearm and demand whoever is here with them make themselves known – but they do that without him having to ask.

“I would have taken him into custody, Rogers, because I believe that murderers should be brought to _justice_ , even if-“

Suddenly, a blur of cold steel flies through the air from where he has pinpointed the figure to be, heading directly towards Steve’s chest. On pure instinct, Bucky’s metal hand snaps outward and snatches it from the air, stopping its trajectory mere millimetres from where the star used to be on Steve’s uniform.

Tony’s mouth snaps shut and the end of his sentence dies in his throat as everyone falls deathly silent, staring in muted horror at the knife.

Bucky is the first to act, having expected this attack, and points his gun towards the spot in the brush where the figure had stopped and thrown the knife, but they’re already on the move. The bushes around them shake as the figure moves through them at a rapid pace, and Bucky tracks their position over the barrel of his gun. But something is making it hard for him to pinpoint the figures location – the dog, he thinks, moving several paces ahead of their assailant and disrupting the leaves, making it difficult for him to draw a bead on the figure based on sound alone. He raises his gun and lines up a shot as a figure bursts through the trees, and he sees Clint pull an arrow from his quiver to do the same, but neither of them are quick enough. All at once, Clint is being dragged backwards towards the tree line, a large knife pressed against his jugular while the arm holding it clamps down on his shoulder and neck, holding him in place. The assailants other arm levels a pistol right back at Bucky, and he hides his head half behind Clint's, ducking so they’re the same height and making sure that Bucky can’t line up a headshot unless he wants to shoot _through_ Clint. From behind him, he hears the painfully familiar sound of Tony’s repulsors engaging, but he clearly has the same problem as Bucky. Neither of them can make a move without risking Clint’s throat being slit.

“Who the fuck,” Their assailant snarls, “Are you supposed to be?”

The pale blue of their attacker’s eyes reflects the lingering light of the evening, the only part of him clearly visible behind Clint’s body and the shadows of the forest. His gaze and his question seem to be directed specifically at Bucky, and the voice is strangely familiar, though he can’t quite pinpoint why. A wolf-like dog bursts from the tree line when the man takes a step forward out of the shadows, dragging Clint with him, but the dog only stands protectively in front of its master instead of attacking, so Bucky doesn’t point his gun away from –

Steve’s shocked gasp registers with him distantly, as does Sam’s confused _what the fuck_ , but it takes him a few long seconds to process what he’s seeing when the man brings himself and Clint into the light, and even longer to try to understand it. The man is tall and broad shouldered, dressed in black jeans with a shearling jacket and combat boots. His long, brown hair is tied behind him in a messy bun, and there’s an empty knife holster strapped to his thigh, where the knife he’s holding to Clint’s neck should be. He’s holding himself with a calm stillness and the confidence of a trained killer, but his pale blue eyes betray his confusion, and a little fear.

The hand at the end of the arm wrapped around Clint’s neck is made of strong, polished metal.

“What,” Bucky gasps out in shock, and his doppelgänger hits him with a withering look of disdain.

“You’re supposed to be me, huh?” the Other Bucky asks, panicked eyes flicking between the four men gaping at him in disbelief.

“No, I – I’m me! What the fuck is this, a hallucination? Shape shifters? Clones?” Bucky asks frantically, looking desperately towards Steve like he will be able to provide any answers. Steve can only look back at him with wide, confused eyes, shrugging helplessly and gripping the edge of his shield in trepidation.

The large husky that had accompanied his possible clone tilts its head to the side in question as it eyes Bucky and Steve in confusion. Suddenly, its once defensive posture drops entirely and it wags its tail in delight as it approaches Bucky, bumping its head against his leg with familiarity before moving to do the same to Steve.

“Greta!” the Other Bucky hisses, a hint of betrayal in his voice as he watches his dog love on his doppelgänger. With a harsh whistle, he has the dog running happily back to his side, still wagging her tail with joy.

“I’m not a clone, or a shape shifter,” the Other Bucky tells him angrily, his grip on Clint and his gun not wavering for a second, “You’re the one who just appeared in my backyard! What are _you?_ ”

“Look,” Steve cuts in in his best Captain America voice, holding his hands up in a mildly patronising gesture that Bucky has always somewhat hated. Sure enough, the Other Bucky bristles when he sees it, “We don’t know what’s going on. We were in a HYDRA base, there was a device, and now we’re here.”

Other Bucky refuses to be placated, and Steve’s intervention only seems to make him angrier as he shakes his head and narrows his eyes at Steve.

“You’re not Steve. Steve’s inside. I saw him two minutes ago. Why are you pretending to be him?”

“Hey, hold on,” Sam says in the same tone he uses with veterans at the VA, “He’s not pretending. There’s two Buckys. Maybe there are two Steves. We don’t know what’s going on any more than you do, man.”

“There aren't two Buckys,” the Other Bucky tells them adamantly, “because _that’s_ not me.”

“Maybe,” Clint chokes out, startling the Other Bucky, who nonetheless loosens his grip on Clint ever so slightly so he can speak, “Maybe it’s like a parallel universe thing. You ever seen the Twilight Zone?”

Other Bucky rolls his eyes and retightens his grip on Clint, apparently deeming his contribution worthless. His gun never wavers from where it’s pointed at his other self. Tony, on the other hand, looks like he’s giving Clint’s suggestion a little more consideration.

“Huh. Parallel universe. Or an alternative timeline, maybe? There could be something in that – with the energy signal we were getting from the base, and the device –“ He mumbles to himself, stopping when he sees the look of disbelief Other Bucky is giving him.

“Well what do you think this is then?” Tony snaps, and Other Bucky narrows his eyes dangerously, gesturing towards his other self.

“He said it himself. Shape shifters, clones, HYDRA mind games – they’ve done it before. You really expect me to believe that he’s me, and that’s Steve, and you’re all you – from another universe?”

Under his metal arm, Clint is turning dangerously blue, and the situation only seems to be escalating despite their best efforts. Bucky isn’t sure how much stock he puts in Clint’s wild parallel universe theory, but this guy sure looks and moves like him. He thinks like him, too – he’s not sure he’s ever told anyone about the kind of twisted mind games HYDRA used to play with him during his captivity, making him think Steve was coming to rescue him, or that he was going to be released, or that he had volunteered and all of the killing was entirely his idea. It could just be a lucky guess based on HYDRA’s track record of sadism, or it could be that this guy _is_ HYDRA, and that’s how he knows. But the thought gives him an idea; the only way to tell for sure if this is really _him_.

“Tell me something only I would know,” he asks his doppelgänger, who laughs nervously.

“Maybe HYDRA didn’t blend your brain in your universe, if that’s even what’s happening here, but they did in mine. My memory's a shit show, pal.” 

“Just-“ Bucky wracks his brain for something to ask – a simple memory, something he got back early after pulling Steve from the Potomac. Maybe this won’t work – even if this really is an alternative universe’s version of him, will their lives be similar enough to have the same memories, to know the same things? He barely remembers the things he did live through, after all. There doesn’t seem to be a better option, though.

_His family_. Steve came back to him first, but then his sister’s faces had appeared in his wake, big brown eyes and tiny hands clutching his tightly. After that, memories of his mother had come back to him, stern and protective but always so kind, stroking his hair, cleaning his bruised knees, telling him everything would be okay…

“What were my sister’s names?” He decides, but he realises before his parallel self pulls a face that it’s too easy.

“You could read that on the internet,” Other Bucky replies with a sigh, shaking his head, “Rebecca, Daisy, Hope. I – _we_ , me and the _real_ Steve– used to call them Becca, Dizzy and Hops.”

Although the memories of his sisters are getting clearer every day, Bucky still finds himself seeking out Steve’s gaze to confirm the truth of Other Bucky’s answer. He remembers, now, infuriating them with little nicknames to match his own – and there’s no way anyone other than himself and Steve would know that.

“I’ll ask you something,” Other Bucky decides, and then pauses, the husky trotting happily in circles around him while he thinks it over;

“Your first kiss?”

Bucky’s eyes widen and flick quickly over to Steve, before he answers sheepishly;

“Jesse Collins. The butcher’s kid, from Red Hook.”

There’s a brief silence while the Other Bucky evaluates him with narrowed eyes, and Bucky wonders if perhaps their universes ( _how has he accepted that explanation so quickly?_ ) are more different than they first appeared. Maybe that nerve-wracking, fumbling encounter with Jesse never happened to this Bucky. Maybe he has sealed Clint’s fate.

But suddenly, the tension seems to drain out of his parallel self’s stance.

“Alright,” Other Bucky acquiesces, slowly unwrapping his arm from Clint’s neck, who falls forward onto his knees, coughing desperately, “I still don’t trust you, but that’s – I don’t know how you could have known that, unless you were… me.”

“Jessie Collins…” Steve murmurs from behind Bucky, mulling it over as he tries to recall her face, “I don’t remember her. The butcher had a daughter?”

Both Bucky’s open their mouths at once to respond, one looking embarrassed while the other looks amused, but both are cut off by Sam’s angry interjection.

“Just like that we’re cool? Why should we trust _you_?” He asks, shoulders still tense under his wing pack with the need to keep his guard up.

“You did just tried to _kill_ Steve,” Bucky agrees, grateful for the distraction from Steve’s line of questioning as he waves the knife he had snatched from the air at his parallel self.

“It was a test,” Other Bucky tells them, rolling his eyes as if his alternative self is an idiot, “If you were really me, you’d have no problem catching it. And if that was really Steve, it wouldn’t have killed him anyway.”

Bucky has to admit the other him is right, but he still doesn’t like it. Regardless, some of the lethal apprehension seems to have drained from the whole group, and Bucky feels comfortable enough to flick the safety back on and holster his weapon as his parallel self does the same. 

“Where are we, anyway?” Clint enquires as Sam helps him to his feet, rubbing idly at the growing bruise around his throat.

“Vermont,” the Other Bucky replies, throwing his arms wide to gesture at the woodland, “Green Mountain National Forest. Isn’t it beautiful?”

_It’s no Brooklyn,_ Bucky thinks, _but it’s something_. Around them are majestic, towering redwoods, stubborn evergreens, and sprawling red, orange and yellow autumn oaks creating a magical dense forest. It’s the kind of place he had let himself imagine from his shitty apartment in Romania, when he was still on the run. He pictured hiding deep in multi-coloured woodland and finding whatever semblance of peace his broken brain would allow him to grasp – and if there was someone with him in those dreams, keeping him warm in the cold New England evenings, that was between him and the Bucharest nights.

“I have a house in Green Mountain!” Tony exclaims, breaking Bucky out of his memories and looking round at the autumn trees with renewed vigour, as if he should now be able to recognise them.

“Well, you _had_ a house here,” Other Bucky replies with amusement, “Now it’s ours.”

“And just why are you living in my cabin?” Tony asks accusatorily, and Other Bucky recoils in confusion at the tone of hostility. Perhaps his relationship with the Tony of this universe is a little less strained than Bucky’s is.

“You gave it to Steve, as a wedding present,” Other Bucky replies, bemused, but is cut off before he can question Tony’s aggression further.

“I’m married?” Steve asks with the same incredulity Tony is clearly feeling at the idea of giving his cabin to Steve when their friendship is still in tatters. Bucky’s stomach sinks like a stone, until the Other Bucky smiles brightly, opening his mouth to reply only to be interrupted by Clint;

“And you live here too?”

Other Bucky nods his assent. A frown flashes across his face as he briefly locks eyes with Bucky, who in turn steps backwards into the shadows as though he wants to hide in the tree line. He _knows_ , suddenly, what this Other Bucky is doing here, living in the woods with this Other Steve. How there’s no way the smile on Other Bucky’s face, one that actually meets his eyes, would ever be there if Steve was shacked up with someone else out here.

And _oh god,_ he wants to hear it, wants it to be real, but he’s not ready. He’s not ready for Steve to hear it, and to see the look in his eyes when he finds out -

“Maybe we should-“ Bucky tries to change the topic with a tone of desperation, but the others are too curious to be swayed.

“Isn’t that weird?” Sam starts, raising an eyebrow at Bucky’s parallel self.

“Sam-“ Bucky tries to interject, looking increasingly distressed – but it’s no use.

“I mean, you third wheeling Steve and his wife out here in the middle of nowhere?” Sam finishes, and Bucky can only cover his face with his metal hand and wish the ground would swallow him whole, knowing what is coming as surely as he has ever known anything.

“Pal,” the Other Bucky replies with a smirk, holding up his flesh hand to show off a thin silver band while the real Bucky stares resolutely at the ground, “I am his wife.”


	4. The Cabin

The silence in the aftermath of Other Bucky’s bombshell is thick.

It takes a good few seconds for the words to really penetrate Steve’s brain, and the glint of sunlight off Other Bucky’s wedding band feels like it’s mocking him. When it hits him – _there is no wife, it’s us, we’re married, to each other, what the hell –_ Steve’s head whips round to look at his Bucky, but his friend stubbornly refuses to meet his gaze. Instead, Bucky turns with a flick of his long hair, cutting through the trees in the direction his other self and the dog had come from, without so much as glancing at Steve as he passes him.

“We should get out of the forest,” Bucky yells over his shoulder in an unsteady voice that echoes through the trees as he storms away from them, “It’ll be getting dark soon.”

“It’s a straight shot north from here,” Other Bucky calls back to his parallel self, but Bucky is already headed that way, tracking the dog’s footprints back to the cabin with an expert hunter’s ease. Steve feels rooted to the spot, torn between cornering Other Bucky and demanding answers to the thousand questions running through his head, and chasing down _his_ Bucky to hysterically ask _did you see that, is that real, are we really…_

Unable to decide, Steve settles on doing nothing at all, standing stock still with what he is sure is a dumb expression on his face and a loose grip on the edge of his shield as he watches Bucky walk away.

“Well,” Tony begins, a quip on the tip of his tongue as the group stands in awkward silence. Whatever he was about to say dies off when he catches sight of Steve, eyes trailing after Bucky with a look of wounded confusion on his face that even Tony can’t bring himself to make fun of. Other Bucky looks back and forth between them all, somehow looking more confused the Steve feels, until Sam takes the initiative to start walking, and they set off after Bucky.

Slowly, the group begin to move north. As they walk, Steve notices Other Bucky slowing his pace so the two of them are lagging behind the rest of the group – and as hesitant as he is to be alone with this strange doppelgänger of his best friend, his curiosity beats his cautiousness. 

When enough paces separate them from Sam, Tony and Clint, the question he had been expecting since Other Bucky’s revelation comes.

“You two aren’t married yet?”

 _Married? They’re not even_ -

“No, we’re not- we don’t-,” Steve stumbles, struggling to find the right words, “We’re friends. It’s not like that,” he finishes resolutely.

Other Bucky is silent at that. To hear that a universe exists in which your lover – or husband, or life partner, or whatever they are to each other here - doesn’t love you must difficult, and the pained expression that crosses Other Bucky’s features instantly makes Steve feel like a monster.

His eyes seek out his own Bucky, silently cutting through the trees in front of the group, as far from Steve as he can get. At a glance, he can see that the set of Bucky’s shoulders is tense; but for perhaps the first time in 100 years of friendship, he truly has no idea what Bucky is thinking.

Him and Bucky. Together. It’s not anything he’s ever really thought about. Bucky had always been a constant in his life, ever since they were kids. But he was always a ladies man, a skirt chaser, always had a hot date on his arm and never saw the same girl twice. And Steve – Steve liked women too. He had nothing against those guys that hung around the docks at night, or the ones that went to that bar downtown that everyone pretended not to know about, but he wasn’t one of them – just because girls wouldn’t look at him, doesn’t mean he never looked at them. And then Peggy- well, for a short time, he really had felt something like love for Peggy. But then Bucky had fallen, and the grief of losing his oldest, closest friend had been so unbearable he had put the Valkyrie into the ice just a few days later.

It’s a new world they’re living in now, though. They’ve been given this second (or third, or fourth) chance at life, and they’ve found each other again. So maybe -

Steve shuts down that line of thought. Whatever this Steve and Bucky have – they’re different people. He and Bucky are brothers in arms, and from the way his Bucky is practically running away from him, that’s all he ever wants to be. Steve had seen the look on Bucky’s face when the Other Bucky had revealed his wedding band – it was panic, if not horror. Clearly he doesn’t share his parallel counterpart’s feelings, so there is no use in Steve examining the strange feeling in his chest any longer.

The dog Other Bucky called Greta is bounding along happily beside them, now clearly more of a pet than the trained attack dog she had initially seemed to be. Her fluffy tail wags with vigour as she runs between Other Bucky and their Bucky, confused but delighted at the presence of an identical copy of her owner.

“Dumbass,” Other Bucky says affectionately with a chuckle as they watch his dog run circles around Steve’s Bucky, “She thinks she’s lucked out and gotten a second dad. Well, a third dad. And a fourth.”

The casual reminder of his- _their_ \- marriage sends heat flooding through Steve’s face, paired with an emotion he struggles to identify, and when the tree line opens up into a small clearing he can’t tell if he’s more relieved or nervous.

Steve and Other Bucky bring up the rear of the group as Bucky storms ahead into the clearing, clearly wanting to put as much distance between himself and Steve as possible. Tony is close behind, still eyeing both Buckys warily, while Sam and Clint are swapping increasingly nonsensical theories as to what their parallel universe selves will be like. Just before they break from the treeline and enter the clearing where Tony’s – _Steve and Bucky’s_ – cabin lies, the Other Bucky gently clasps Steve’s arm, pulling him close.

“Jesse Collins,” he whispers conspiratorially with a glint of mirth in his eyes, “Was the butcher’s _son._ If you hadn’t put that together yet.”

Steve had, mostly, put that together. He _knew_ that butcher from Red Hook didn’t have a daughter. But Bucky – _his_ Bucky, not this other, strange Bucky – told him everything. They knew each other inside out. Bucky’s first kiss had been with Dot O’Connor, the sweet Irish girl on their block, when they were 15. He had never shown the slightest interest in men. If he had been – _like that_ , Steve surely would have known. Buck would have told him, because they trusted each other completely.

And yet.

Far in front of him, his Bucky seems determined to outrun Steve, the Other Bucky, and this entire situation, but there is nowhere for him to go. Instead, he stands, arms folded tightly across his chest and head tilted down, at the foot of what Steve can only assume is there home in this universe.

The cabin is beautiful. A small set of stairs leads up to a humble lodge, decorated with intricate wooden panelling and lit by the soft orange glow of lanterns. Greta runs ahead of them, weaving through an impressive vegetable garden in the tranquil green clearing and disappearing through the glass doors that are thrown wide open.

“I gave you this,” Tony begins, gesturing to the cabin in front of them as they all stop to examine it, “and I gave you that?”

His gaze is fixed on the Other Bucky’s metal hand, which Steve has also been trying to subtly examine. Though most of his arm is covered by his jacket, it doesn’t look like the sleek tribal design that Shuri had painstakingly crafted for their Bucky.

“Oh, yeah,” He says with a lopsided smile, shucking off his jacket to give Tony a better look, “You offered me an upgrade, after I was allowed to come back to the States, since the other one was-“

The Other Bucky trails off, looking a little lost.

“They designed it to hurt,” He decides on, flexing the plates of his new arm while Tony looks on in fascination, “So you and Bruce made this.” 

It’s a little less gaudy than the Iron Man suit that Tony is currently sporting, but the design has Stark Industries written all over it. In place of the slick jet black of Bucky’s Wakandan arm or the shining silver of the HYDRA arm, is a gleaming gold, interlaced with thin lines of glowing blue as though the arm was powered by the same Arc Reactor energy that powered Tony’s suit. Even their Bucky seems fascinated enough to take a few steps closer, but he stops short of approaching Steve and Other Bucky, and retreats back towards the house as soon as he sees Steve’s eyes on him.

“Huh,” is all Tony has to say to that, looking between Bucky and Steve and Other Bucky like he’s trying to figure out a particularly difficult equation. Steve, too, is confused. What events happened here – or didn’t happen – to mean the Other Steve’s relationship with Tony wasn’t destroyed, and to mean that he would do something so kind for _Bucky_ of all people? Did Tony never learn about Bucky’s role in Howard’s death in this universe?

His line of thought is cut off as a new but familiar voice rumbles from within the house.

“Buck?” It calls, “Are you coming in? It’s getting dark out.”

Other Steve appears in the doorway, hot on the heels of Greta, who clambers happily back onto the decking. His hair is longer and a little darker, and his face is masked with a thick beard, but it’s still a shock to the system for Steve to see himself so clearly. Sometimes, when he thinks of himself, he still sees a tiny weakling – a boy, in a body he no longer owns. This is – well, _a man._ He’s broad and tall, dressed in a tight maroon Henley and sweat pants, and clutching a cup of tea in one large hand.

With Steve’s enhanced senses, he can hear the sharp intake of breathe that comes from his Bucky when the man’s gaze falls on him. Other Steve’s brow furrows in confusion as he takes in Bucky’s mission uniform and weapons, and he blinks slowly, ruffled hair making it look as though he just woke up from a nap.

“What are you wearing-“ He begins, before his eyes adjust to the evening light and he takes in Sam, Clint and Tony in their full mission gear, too. Tension settles in his shoulders, but he doesn’t drop into a fighting stance until he sees Steve, a perfect copy of him, standing shoulder to shoulder with _his_ Bucky.

“Bucky,” Other Steve gasps, cup of tea falling forgot to the ground and shattering, “That’s not me, get away from him!”

He rears forward as if he is about to plough through the rest of the team and drag his Bucky away from this imposter Steve, until the Other Bucky holds up his hands placatingly.

“Babe, it’s okay,” He says calmly, and Steve feels his whole body flush at the endearment– even though it’s not being said to him, not really, “I don’t really know what’s going on – but they don’t seem to be a threat.”

Other Steve’s shoulders relax ever so slightly, but he’s clearly still ready for a fight. His gaze swings back round to their Bucky, and his body language is pure confusion as he takes in the black Wakandan arm and unfamiliar mission kit. It snaps back around to Steve, then, taking in the lack of beard, shorter hair, starless uniform and identical shield.

“What the hell?” He asks, as bewildered as Steve had felt when they’d first arrived in the forest. Other Bucky slowly makes his way through the group towards his husband, hands still outstretched in a calming gesture, and Other Steve steps down from the porch to meet him.

“They’re us, I think,” Other Bucky says gently as he approaches, placing his flesh hand on Other Steve’s face to comfort him, “I don’t know how, but I think – they’re from another place; other versions of us.”

Other Steve breathes out in a shaking exhale, and leans ever so slightly into Other Bucky’s hand on his cheek.

“I was worried – you were gone too long,” Other Steve tells him quietly, “And then…”

He flicks his eyes towards Steve with suspicion and pent up aggression, as if challenging him to dare come near _his_ Bucky again. When he looks back towards his husband, his eyes are soft.

“Honestly, Stevie, they seem as confused as we are. I don’t think they’re a threat right now. Let’s go inside and talk, okay?”

The pair press their foreheads together for a long second, and such a simple gesture is so intimate that Steve has to look away. They part as quickly as they had come together, and Other Steve turns somewhat sheepishly towards the gaggle of familiar strangers standing at the bottom of his porch.

“Okay, um,” He says, “I guess you had better come in.”


	5. Divergence

“Can you give us a minute?” Other Bucky asks once they’ve all piled in to the cabin, and he doesn’t wait for a response before dragging a still suspicious Other Steve out of the room and down the corridor, Greta following at their heels. Steve watches them go in muted disbelief, eyes flicking from the back of his own head to their joint hands, metal and flesh fingers intertwined.

“You’re kind of adorable,” Clint coos to Steve and Bucky once their doppelgangers have disappeared down the hall, hands pressed to his cheeks and eyes wide like he is looking at a particularly cute puppy. When Steve can draw his eyes away from his own retreating back ( _there's no way his shoulders are that huge, right?_ ) to risk a glance at Bucky, he finds his friend resolutely avoiding his gaze, arms wrapped around himself and hair shielding his expression from view.

“Clint-“ Sam warns, levelling the archer with a dangerous look and flicking his gaze pointedly between where Bucky is visibly distressed and Steve just looks lost.

“No, really, the cutest. I didn’t have you pinned as the settling down type, Barnes, but-“

“CLINT,” Sam warns more sternly, as Bucky curls in on himself, gaze that had been locked on the direction their parallel selves had gone in now resolutely focused on the ground.

For once, Tony has nothing to add, still puzzling something out in his head, and in the ensuing awkward silence Steve tries to tune into the married couple’s conversation using his enhanced hearing.

“ – no, not just not married, I mean not together. At all.” Other Bucky is saying from somewhere down the corridor, voice pained as if the words physically hurt him to utter. 

“What? But how could we not have -,” He hears Other Steve cut himself off with a mournful noise, “Buck, I’d love you in every universe.”

From the corner of his eye, Steve sees Bucky flinch and fold further in on himself, and Steve knows that he must have been listening into the couple’s conversation, too. It's obvious from his reaction that Bucky can’t even bear to _think_ about them together like that, and for reasons Steve can't quite explain, he feels his stomach sink down to his feet. It’s not that Steve _wants_ that, or anything, but the thought of Bucky being actively disgusted by it doesn’t sit right with him either.

When the couple return, they invite their unexpected guests to follow them into the living room. One by one, they follow, but Bucky lingers behind in the entrance hall for a long second, eyeing the front door like a cornered animal about to make a run for it, until Steve turns back and asks gently,

“You okay, Buck?”

Confusingly, both Bucky’s answer affirmatively in unison, although Steve is not particularly convinced by their Bucky’s quiet “I’m fine.” Bucky does come in, however, letting his arms fall to his sides and looking slightly more at ease as they come to stand in front of a roaring fire and a large, cosy looking couch piled high with soft blankets.

“Okay, that’s a point of order,” Tony starts, snapping himself out of his reverie and throwing himself down on the couch like he owns the place – which he sort of does, in a way, “We can’t have Steve and Steve and Bucky and Bucky. We need a way to differentiate.”

Clint nods along with him, and points squarely to each man in turn, first the doppelgangers and then their Steve and Bucky, as he says;

“James. Rogers. Bucky. Steve.” 

Bucky seems to have lowered his guard slightly, looking a little more relaxed now the conversation has drifted away from their parallel selves' relationship. He nods his agreement with Clint’s naming scheme, as does Steve, but Other Steve looks less than enthused. 

“Why do we have to change our names? This is our universe!” He protests, and their Bucky throws him a charming smile, one that used to rule the streets of Brooklyn but has been crushed under the heel of army generals, HYDRA handlers and inhumane scientists for far too long. It ignites a burst of warmth in Steve’s chest to see it again.

“And we’re your guests. Didn’t your Ma raise you to treat guests right, Stevie?”

Other Steve quickly cracks under Bucky’s puppy dog eyes and nods his assent, so quickly that it makes Other Bucky laugh a joyful laugh Steve hasn’t heard in far, far too long.

“Even an alternate version of me can get you wrapped around his finger, huh?” He says, and both Steve’s blush furiously while Bucky looks suddenly sheepish in the face of Other Bucky’s delight, “Fine. I can be James for a while.”

He takes a seat in a large armchair – not quite large enough for Rogers to squeeze in next to him, but he does anyway – and gestures for the others to sit. Sam kicks lightly at Tony’s feet until he removes them from the sofa, and Clint settles next to him, while Steve perches on the arm of the couch. Bucky chooses the armchair on the opposite side, so he is as far away from Steve and their loved-up doppelgangers as physically possible while still being in the same room.

“Tell us the last thing you remember,” Rogers asks once they’re settled, and so they do.

They describe the mission, in as much detail as possible, and the strange energy signals – then the structure. The archway with its strange blue glow; the cause of the mystery signals they were sent there is search of. Bucky is strangely quiet throughout their description, his brief good mood seemingly vanished after his attempt at banter with Rogers devolved into another reminder of their relationship. He keeps his head tilted towards the window and seems lost in thought, and Steve finds himself unable to stop his gaze frequently returning to the other man in concern.

Rogers and James are interested, but they can’t really help. The energy signals don’t sound like anything they’ve come across before. Eventually, they run aground, no closer to understanding where they are and how they got there than they had been when they first appeared in the heart of the forest. Outside, the sun has almost completely set, and Steve wonders idly if there is some greater divergence in this universe that they have yet to discover - if the moon that rises will be square, or nights will last for five times as long, or gravity will stop when the clock strikes midnight. Eyeing the way James has wrapped his entire body around Rogers larger frame in the too-small armed chair they are sharing, Steve isn't sure anything could surprise him at this point. 

“This universe - stuff’s the same, right?” Clint begins nonsensically when a gap in the conversation allows, almost echoing Steve's thoughts, “But also different. What’s up with that?” He gestures lazily with one hand to James golden arm and the way he is cuddled up to Rogers, then over to Bucky’s black Wakandan arm and the cold distance between himself and Steve as if to highlight this universe’s differences.

Sam huffs out a laugh at the inane phrasing of the question, but Tony perks up as if it actually makes sense.

“No, he’s got a point. Those questions you asked outside – you must have had the same, or a similar childhood, right?” He asks animatedly, “And Steve – I mean Rogers – still got the serum, and you’ve still got a metal arm. But something diverged. You’ve got a different arm, and the two of you, are. You know.”

“Married?” James asks dryly, amused by Tony’s sheepishness, but he looks like he’s mulling it over, “Okay. Only a few things are different, right? So we diverged somewhere – somewhere recent. Where does everything change?”

Together, they try and retrace their steps over the last few months. Bucky is still quiet, but at least seems to be listening now, leaning forward in his chair slightly. His eyes seem drawn to where James and Rogers are jammed together in an armchair built for one, but his gaze settles on the mantelpiece just above their heads as if he can’t quite bear to look directly at them.

There are similarities in their stories; Bucky and Steve’s fight on the Helicarriers, the fall of SHIELD, Bucky dragging Steve from the Potomac and walking away. The bombing in Vienna that drew Bucky out of hiding still happened, and the Accords were still written. But there are also differences; Bucky’s time in Wakanda, for one. James has met Shuri and T’Challa, and they’re friendly enough, but he never spent any significant time there. He and Rogers, and all those held on the Raft, had been able to come straight back to the US after the accords, with Tony’s help. Something had happened, it seemed, in between the bombing in Vienna and that fateful meeting with Zemo and Stark in a Siberian bunker. Something that resulted in Tony granting them clemency instead of trying to kill them both.

“Oh,” Rogers says suddenly just as it seems they have hit a dead end, understanding flooding his features as he looked back and forth between Steve and Bucky and the distance between them, “It must be what happened in Romania. That’s what changed things.”

Understanding colours James’ face, too, followed by a secretive smile directed at his parallel self. It’s so intimate that Steve almost doesn’t want to know the answer, but he still finds himself asking;

“What happened in Romania?”

They tell him, in between sickeningly sweet glances at each other, what happened to change everything – how a seemingly minor decision caused their universes to diverge into what they see before them.

After months of searching for the man that pulled him from the river, Rogers had found James in much the same way Steve had found Bucky; living alone in that sad little Bucharest apartment, only a threadbare mattress and notebook to his name. But when they had finally been within arm’s reach of each other after nearly 70 years of separation…

“When I saw you, after running for you from so long – I just had to –, “ James hesitates, lacing the fingers of his flesh hand together with his husband’s and giving both Steves a shy smile, “I kissed you. 100 years of being a coward and not telling you how I felt – I just couldn’t wait a moment longer when you came back to me. I had no idea how you would react, but, well... it seems to have worked out.”

Rogers returns his smile, brushing his thumb over the wedding band on James’ finger slowly, and Steve feels sick for reasons he doesn’t quite understand, unable to drag his eyes away from the action.

That was all it took – one kiss? One split second decision that spiralled into this – idyllic retirement, a beautiful house, and a marriage? Steve allows himself to imagine it for a second – living here, like this, with Bucky. How would he have reacted if Bucky had marched across that tiny apartment, grabbed him by the face and...

Could they have ended up here, if Bucky had made that choice?

But of course not. Bucky doesn’t feel that way for him – _that’s_ where their universes diverge. And besides, Bucky is like a brother to him, and nothing more. He loves Bucky, of course, but it's not like _that_ \- he doesn't feel the same things for Bucky that he thinks he felt for Peggy. Steve knows he can be dense at times, but he would surely know if he had been in love with his best friend for 100 years.

“It just unlocked everything for me,” Rogers tells his other self, who is sitting so tensely it feels like his bone swill snap, “I felt like an idiot. And I knew what I was fighting for, then.”

“And when we met up with Tony, he finally understood why I had to protect Bucky so fiercely. He could see – I wasn’t choosing one friend over another. I wasn’t throwing everything away because I was nostalgic for my past. It wasn’t about the Accords. It was-,” Rogers continues, cutting himself off as he brings his and James’ clasped hands to his mouth and kisses his husband’s knuckles gently.

“It was for love.”

It's so sickly sweet that Steve has to look away. Glancing to the rest of the team crammed onto the couch, he sees Clint wearing the same expression that he gets while watching particularly adorable cat videos, and Sam looks almost proud of Steve's parallel self. Tony's expression, however, is unreadable. 

“And I bought that? Really?” Tony asks incredulously, torn between anger, nausea and being genuinely moved.

“You’re a romantic at heart, Tony. At least _our_ Tony is,” James tells him with smile, and Steve suddenly can’t look at this imposter anymore. He wants to see a smile on his own Bucky’s face, wants to know what he thinks about all this –

But when he looks round, Bucky is already gone.


	6. Nightmares

As Bucky settles onto the porch, far enough away from the house that he can only hear muffled echoes of the conversation, he wishes he had left earlier. That he hadn’t had to hear about the decision he never made.

He had considered it, at the time. Of course he had. Grabbing Steve by his stupid face and kissing him, giving into urges that he’d been fighting since they were 12 when he appeared like a guardian angel in that shitty Bucharest apartment. But he had resisted, knowing it would make everything worse, their relationship non-existent at the point and his own sense of self too fragile.

But if he had – if he had just been brave enough. Would it have turned out like this? Would he have gotten everything he wanted?

Bucky shakes his head to clear the intrusive thoughts. _Of course not._ It’s a parallel universe – things are different here. This Steve loves this him. _His_ Steve sees him as a brother, a best friend, and nothing more. All he would have achieved by kissing Steve in Bucharest was a polite refusal, or worse, a punch in the face and being left to the cops that were swarming on him.

Ok, Steve would never have done that. But seeing disgust or pity in his eyes would have hurt more than a punch ever could.

To his surprise, it’s Sam that comes to him when the others notice that he has slipped away. It’s already evening, the clearing lit up by the moon, but the forest surrounding them is blanketed in impenetrable darkness.

A part of him wants to run straight into it, get lost, and never find his way back.

The other part wants to turn back into the house and ask Steve in his most pleading voice –

_Could we have ever had what they have?_

Sam is coming over, perching tentatively on the step next to him, so he kicks his brain back into gear before he gets any deeper down that rabbit hole. There’s a long, drawn out moment of silence as they watch the fireflies play at the edge of the woods.

“You knew before the other you told us, didn’t you? That he was married to this universe’s Steve. I could see it on your face – you didn’t want to hear him say it out loud,” Sam tells him quietly when the silence becomes too much, “How did you know?”

Sam is sharper than Bucky gives him credit for, some times. His years of work with veterans who are one step removed from reality, still trapped in the cycle of horrors they have seen has given him the uncanny ability to read people who give nothing away. People like Bucky.

He debates not answering. Debates turning round and going back into the house, or throwing himself to the mercy of the woods. But there’s something about Sam’s patient gaze and it’s complete lack of judgement that makes him blurt it out.

“I-“ Bucky cut himself off, swallowing around the lump in his throat and resolutely avoiding eye contact, “There’s no one else. Not for me. And even in a parallel universe I couldn’t picture there being, you know? He – _I_ \- wouldn’t have been happy like that if Steve was shacked up here with someone else.”

Sam doesn’t look shocked – Bucky had never been all that subtle with his feelings, no matter how hard he tried, and not everyone is as dense as Steve.

“And you and him – I mean _our_ him – you never…?” Sam asks, but he seems to know the answer already, from Bucky’s body language alone.

“He doesn’t feel the same. That’s where our universes diverge – he’s never looked at me like this Steve looks at _his_ Bucky.”

And any lingering hope he had that Steve _might_ have felt the same had died when James’ flashed that wedding band at them in the forest. Bucky could barely look at his oldest friend, but the brief glimpse he had seen revealed shock, horror and panic. He hadn’t been able to stay within reaching distance of Steve for a second longer, taking off into the woods and blaming the sharp autumn breeze for the moisture in his eyes.

There’s another period of silence where Sam seems to be mulling that over. Bucky keeps his gaze locked onto the point where the clearing turns into forest, unable to see the pity on their friend’s face.

“You know, I think-“ Sam begins, but is cut off by Clint appearing in the doorway and hovering tentatively over the threshold.

“Hey, sorry,” Clint begins, looking more than a little awkward at having interrupted them, “They’re making dinner, and we’re organising where we’re all gonna stay and stuff. They asked me to come get you.”

It’s an out, and he takes it. Grateful for the interruption, Bucky stands and follows Clint back inside before Sam can finish. He doesn’t want to hear what Sam thinks.

* * *

Dinner is surprisingly good – clearly this Steve and Bucky have invested in some cooking lessons since moving to the wilderness. Over their meal, they learn more about their counterparts, and how their lives have diverged in the last few months. They married six months after coming back to the US, with Sam as their best man and Natasha as maid of honour. After a few months spent rebuilding SHIELD with Fury, Steve had retired, handing the shield over to Sam. Bucky, however, still accepted missions from Fury now and then – the spectre of HYDRA still hangs over him, and he can’t ever feel fully at peace, even here in their tranquil forest getaway, until he has dismantled the organisation piece by piece.

James offers to show them some wedding pictures, and Steve can’t tell whether it’s him or Bucky that declines faster.

After dinner, the topic of sleeping quarters is breached. It’s a spacious cabin, but it only has 3 guest bedrooms.

“Well, you’ll all have to double up,” Tony tells them, already grabbing one of the blankets that James has gathered for them – the cold doesn’t bother the super soldiers, but they had worried sweetly for their non-enhanced guests. Clint rolls his eyes, but no one stops Tony from claiming a bed to himself; after the Raft, the trust that was once between them has been damaged too deeply to sleep beside the man.

It makes sense for Steve to share with Bucky. Bucky barely knows Clint and Sam, and trusts them even less. Besides, he and Steve had often shared a bed when they were younger. From keeping each other warm during freezing New York winters, to having only one room in an apartment they were barely making rent on, to small tents on the road in Europe during the war, it was familiar to them. But from the way Bucky has been avoiding him all day, Steve is sure he’ll ask to sleep with Clint or Sam.

“I should. With Steve.” Bucky says haltingly, surprising Steve and looking like the words cause him physical pain as he spits them out, “I get-“

 _Nightmares_ , Steve knows the sentence will end, though Bucky cuts himself off. Or flashbacks, more accurately. Replays of the torture HYDRA put him through, the inhumane things they did to him and the atrocities they made him commit. In their Brooklyn apartment, Steve had often been awoken by screaming or choked off gasps when Bucky had first come back from Wakanda. He would run to Bucky’s room, desperate to drag him out of those awful scenes and into their safe apartment, but he never knew what he would be greeted with. Sometimes it would be a metal fist to the face, when Bucky woke not knowing where he was, and mistook Steve for a target, or handler, or HYDRA agent come to reclaim him. Other times it was Bucky heaving over the toilet, hair a mess and face streaming with tears. Steve would sometimes spent hours talking him down, prying the knife from his hand or gently stroking his back, until Bucky came back to himself with a shaky “Steve?”

Sometimes – rarely – Bucky would allow Steve to hold him. He would wrap Bucky up in his arms, a perfect mirror of the way Bucky used to hold him when Steve was small, shaking and wracked with hacking coughs that made him feel like he was choking on glass. He would press his face into Bucky’s hair, muttering soothing words of comfort, until Bucky’s breathing would return to normal and he drifted back into sleep.

The nightmares have lessened in frequency a little in the last few months – although from the constant exhaustion that seems to cling to Bucky, Steve suspects they haven’t at all, and Bucky is just getting better at hiding them. Regardless, they still occur, and while Steve can defend himself in the event of Bucky pulling a weapon or lashing out with his metal arm, a non-enhanced individual could not.

It makes complete sense for them to share a bed. And clearly that’s the only reason Bucky is asking – he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and he doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. Bucky’s body language is telling Steve that he wouldn’t want to be anywhere near him if it weren’t strictly necessary.

He misses the rest of the discussion, too deep in his thoughts, and when he comes back to himself Clint and Sam have set off down the hallway and Bucky is looking at him expectantly from the doorway of a bedroom just to their right.

They dress for bed in relative silence, fitting perfectly into their parallel selves clothes, until Steve can’t stand the fractured quiet anymore.

“Bucky, I –“ He starts, without really knowing what he wants to say, “You seem… off. Are you okay?”

It feels like a stupid question – everything about today has been _off_ , and Bucky clearly is not okay - but Bucky doesn’t seem to mind.

“Yeah,” He replies, rewarding Steve with a small smile and some of the only eye contact he’s made since they arrived here, “Weird day.”

Steve can’t argue with that, although it’s clearly an understatement, but he lets Bucky disappear into the ensuite bathroom to brush his teeth. When he comes out, it’s easier to pretend he’s already asleep. Bucky can probably see right through him because of his breathing pattern, but if he can he doesn’t let on. Instead, he settles down into his side of the bed, careful not to let any parts of their bodies touch. The last thing Steve hears before he succumbs to the exhaustion of the day is a quiet;

“Night, Stevie.”

* * *

When he wakes, Bucky isn’t next to him. A jolt of panic runs through him and he looks around wildly, worried Bucky’s nightmares have sent him running into the darkened, dangerous forest which surrounds them.

To his relief, Bucky is still in the room with him. The curtains have been thrown wide, and his friend stands illuminated in the moonlight, statuesque and strangely fragile despite his stature. His blue eyes are open, but unfocused and unseeing as if he’s sleepwalking, his mind not quite existing on the same plane of reality as his body.

“Buck,” Steve calls gently, rising slowly from the bed with his hands raised, not wanting to trigger the other into attacking if he isn’t sure where he is, “Bucky, are you okay?”

No reply. Bucky doesn’t even flinch, and makes no indication that he has heard Steve at all. His gaze is fixed on some point beyond the window pane, but there’s nothing out there. Whatever danger Bucky is seeing is in his head, where Steve cannot reach him.

“Come back to bed, Bucky. Come on,” Steve coaxes gently. Bucky’s arms are wrapped tightly around himself, and Steve places his own hands on his friend’s upper arms, just below his shoulders, willing him back to the warmth of the blankets.

He looks ethereal, here, bathed in the blue of the moon, messy hair cascading past his sharp cheekbones. It has been an excessively long time since Steve was able to look directly at him like this, without his friend ducking away in embarrassment. In Brooklyn, Bucky used to let him look for hours, posing for portraits and anatomy studies. But during the war, he had refused to stay still for long enough for Steve to really see him, let alone draw him. He had been constantly restless, his body shifting and changing under the power of whatever Zola had done to him on that table. At times, it seemed as though he was trying to outrun it; never allowing himself to slow down enough to think about it, or for Steve to see it.

These days, every fibre of Bucky’s being is imbued with the unnatural stillness of an assassin and calm patience of a sniper – but his shame and repulsion for his own body and the way it has been changed without his consent mean Steve can only look for seconds before Bucky is twisting away and folding into himself.

But here and now, Bucky seems unaware of Steve’s tired gaze, and for once he is allowed to drink his fill. He clutches Bucky tightly by the shoulders, and though he can feel gentle breaths and a steady pulse beneath his hands, Bucky is silent and unmoving. Just as he thinks that his friend may have fallen asleep on his feet, he speaks.

“ _It’s not real_ ,” Bucky whispers suddenly, voice shattering the silence like a gunshot and making Steve jump despite his quiet tone, “I’m being punished.”

 _Punished?_ Steve is used to Bucky not making complete sense when he only has one foot out of a dream, but here he sounds strangely lucid. Still, Steve isn’t sure what he means.

“What do you mean?” Steve asks softly, rubbing his hands up and down Bucky’s arms as if warming him up will help, “What’s not real? Why are you being punished?”

“This,” He whispers, and when Steve meets his gaze in the reflection of the window, he can see that Bucky’s face is streaked with tears, “Them. It’s mind games again. Showing me everything that could have been, everything I don’t deserve.”

Steve wants desperately to understand, but at 3am and on the edge of sleep himself, he just can’t quite parse what Bucky is trying to say.

“You deserve everything,” He settles on, although Bucky doesn’t seem to be taking in Steve’s voice, “I don’t know what you mean, Buck, but please, come back to bed.”

Slowly, Bucky allows himself to be guided back into the large double bed, settling into light sleep so quickly it seems as though he never truly left it. Steve takes longer to fall, replaying the words over and over in his head.

_Everything that could have been._

In the morning, he knows this will become just one more thing they don’t talk about.


	7. Breakfast

Bucky wakes in the early hours of the morning, while Steve is still dozing beside him. They’re facing each other, now, and Steve has his arm thrown across Bucky’s side of the bed so that their fingers are almost, almost touching. He’s seen that hand reaching out for him so many times – on the side of a train in the Alps, to pull him over a railing in a burning factory, to let Bucky drag his bruised body from the tarmac of a Brooklyn back alley-

He doesn’t reach out and take it. Doesn’t let himself think about it.

Instead, he quietly slips out of bed, his training allowing him to move silently as though floating through the house. One of the jackets James had lent him has a half-empty pack of cigarettes in the pocket, so he sits out on the front porch and smokes as he watches the sun claw its way up over the evergreens.

He only means to have one, but by the time the sun has risen fully into the sky and he can hear the others waking up, the entire pack is gone. They have no effect on him, physically, anyway – only the smell will linger.

At some point last night, someone had cleared away the shattered remains of the mug Rogers had dropped, when he had first seen them all gathered at the foot of his porch. Now, all that remains is a slight stain on the wood. When the next burst of autumn rain pours down, that will be gone, too.

When he’s done, he brushes the butts into the empty pack and tucks it back into his pocket. By now, the kitchen behind him is full of movement, bickering voices and the sounds of sizzling food and cutlery being handed out. Full of life. And although he feels the furthest thing from full of life himself, he makes himself stand up, brushing the stray ash from the knees of his jeans, and returns to the cabin.

In yet another display of his awful luck, Steve enters the kitchen from the bedroom ( _not,_ he stresses to himself, _their_ bedroom) just as Bucky enters from the porch. Steve hasn’t yet bothered changing out of the loose t-shirt and sweatpants he had worn to bed, hand-me-downs from Rogers, and he looks painfully soft. His pale cheeks are flushed red with the remnants of the warmth of the bed they shared, blonde hair in disarray, and he shoots Bucky the tiniest smile when their eyes meet across the kitchen.

Bucky can’t even bring himself to look at him.

Breakfast is carnage, with too many bodies and barely enough food, although James and Rogers are clearly trying their best to provide for their unexpected guests. They seem strangely happy this morning, despite being invaded by suspicious parallel universe versions of themselves, and James’ good mood makes Bucky’s sombre attitude all the more obvious. The sickly sweetness of Rogers handing his husband a stack of pancakes with a syrup smile painted on sets Bucky’s teeth on edge, and his focuses on helping Clint sneak bits of bacon off Tony’s plate to feed to Greta instead of looking at them.

Early morning small talk carries on around him, but he doesn’t partake. He turns in on himself again, and lets his mind wander.

He remembers standing at the window last night. Thinks he remembers Steve holding him gently. Asking him softly to come to bed.

But he’s had that dream before, so he disregards it. _Not real._ He’s not very good at telling what is and isn’t, these days, but their lives are so bizarre it often doesn’t actually matter.

It startles him from his thoughts when James appears beside him, a thick shearling jacket in hand and Greta close at his heels.

“Come on,” His parallel self says, metal hand meeting metal shoulder with a clang, “It’s time for Greta’s morning walk.”

The husky goes crazy as soon as she hears the door click open, and Bucky has spent enough time as a soldier to know an order when he hears one, so he rises too.

Loathe as he is to admit it, it’s nice. The woods around them are beautiful, autumn blanketing the forest floor in a thick cloak of sunset hued leaves. Unsurprisingly, his gait and pace is identical to that of James, and neither of them allow their footsteps to make any sound that would disrupt the peace of the forest. Greta has no such concerns, lolloping happily through the trees with no concept of subtlety. James must see him wince when she lands heavily on a branch, causing a loud _snap_ and a flock of crows to erupt from the canopy in response.

“It’s safe here,” He’s assured, “JARVIS monitors the perimeter. If anything dangerous – bears, coyotes, HYDRA - comes too close, he lets me know.”

“That’s how you knew we were in the woods?” Bucky realises, and his parallel self huffs out a laugh.

“Well, yeah. That and the fact that I could hear Tony and Steve yelling at each other from a mile away.”

There are a few more beats of silence, Greta notwithstanding, before James patiently tries to engage him in conversation again.

“Their relationship was a little rocky for a while, there. So was mine and Tony’s, what with Howard…” He begins, both men wincing in unison at the reminder of their actions, “But to see them like that, at each other’s throats? It was bizarre.”

Bucky feels a near hysterical laugh bubbling up inside of him at that. Alternative universes, parallel selves, a world in which him and Steve are _married_ \- and Tony and Steve fighting is what James thinks is bizarre?

“That’s the difference between our worlds, I guess,” Bucky snaps, suddenly angry with James for reasons he can’t quite pinpoint, “In your world, Tony forgave you and made you an arm. In my world, Steve doesn’t love me back.”

It’s not what he meant to say, but once it’s out there, he can’t take it back. Doesn’t want to, really. It’s true. But the look on James’ face is nothing short of devastated, and he feels a little bad about being so blunt.

“I knew,” His other self whispers, pity radiating from his blue eyes so strongly that Bucky can’t quite meet them, “I knew there wouldn’t be a version of me that didn’t love him. He’s been everything to me for so long. But I couldn’t imagine…”

“That there would be a version of him that doesn’t love you?” Bucky laughs bitterly, his chest feeling like it’s on the verge of cracking open, “Yeah, well, you found it. Maybe he loves me in every other universe, every other timeline out there. But not mine. Not in mine.”

It’s too much. His own sympathetic eyes looking back at him, the oppressive silence of the forest, the god damn puppy that thinks he and Steve are her _dads._ He longs to be away from here, but were would he go? This isn’t even their world. All he can do is turn on his heels and march back to the house – _their_ house – and ignore James’ pleas for him to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You will notice that JARVIS still exists in his original form even though this all takes place post-Age of Ultron, because I don't care for FRIDAY. I also don't care enough about Vision to really think about what consequences JARVIS still existing would have for him and his creation, and he's not in this fic anyway, so just don't think too hard about it.


	8. Escape Plan

Over lunch, they plan.

Truth be told, he hadn’t really thought about the fact that they were trapped here. Getting back hadn’t really seemed like his biggest priority since arriving – that had been avoiding Steve. Or maybe it’s that he doesn’t really have anything to go back _to_. For the longest time, his home had been Steve, and Steve is still here with him, even if there is this terrible awkwardness between them.

But the others are more frantic, and it dawns on his for the first time how clueless they really are. With no idea what happened to them, how they got here, what those energy signals were or how they get back, it feels like they’re going nowhere fast.

Tony had begun to squirrel away all the Stark technology in the house not long after they arrived, retreating into a room at the end of the hall with everything he could get his hands on and a battered old tool box. Nominally a security room, it only seemed to be used when James’ paranoia got the better of him and the only thing that could comfort him was a clear view of their land’s perimeters on a wall of CCTV monitors. Still, it had a complex system of interconnected screens, computers and detection systems, all integrated with JARVIS - plenty for Tony to play with.

To Bucky's great relief, they have all barely seen Tony since their arrival, only catching a glimpse of him whenever he made a pit stop in the kitchen for more coffee and sugary foods. The only people who really seemed concerned by his hermit-like behaviour were Rogers and James - but then, _their_ Tony never tried to murder them in a Siberian bunker, shot Bucky's arm off, or locked them in an underwater prison without so much as a trial. They're probably a little better disposed to Stark than the rest of their guests are.

“Okay,” Tony begins when he finally reappears, having demanded everyone gather on the sofas for his announcement like a 70s TV detective declaring who the murderer is, “Nobody get their hopes up, but I’ve got an idea. I don’t think it was the archway structure that sent us here – that was just a conduit. It was the energy it was conducting; the nasty blue stuff. Now, if we could harness some of that energy – well, it _could_ send us back.”

“How would we do that?” Sam asks sceptically, and Tony fixes him with one of his signature _isn’t-it-obvious?_ looks.

“This house comes with a free side of JARVIS, and I’ve been working on connecting him to the JARVIS in my suit. _My_ JARVIS took readings of the energy signals back on our side of the inter-dimensional portal thingy. If I can pass them on to this JARVIS, who’s plugged into the cabin’s perimeter detection system, they can join forces and run a scan to see if any traces of that energy are still hanging around.”

“And if there’s nothing?” Clint asks hesitantly, but Tony simply waves his question away.

“Cross that bridge when we come to it,” He says dismissively, already bent over the Stark tablet he has been tapping away at since he came up with the idea.

It sounds like a shot in the dark, but it’s more of a concrete plan than any of the rest of them have come up with, so it will have to do.

“Wouldn’t this be quicker if there were, you know,” Sam begins, “Two Starks?”

The thought sends a shiver down Bucky’s spine, but it grabs Tony’s attention away from his tablet once again.

“Hey, that’s a point – parallel Capsicle and Tinman, why haven’t we met parallel the rest of us yet?”

“Or gotten a visit from SHIELD,” Steve adds, and Bucky feels himself nodding. If Fury knew alternative Avengers had fallen out the sky, there is no way he would let it go uninvestigated. Hell, they’d probably all be taken into custody until they could prove who they were and where they came from. And then – would he let them return to their own world, if they could find a way? In a world where Captain America and the Winter Soldier are all but retired, would Fury really let two more super soldiers slip through his fingers?

James and Rogers share a look that makes him think they’re following his thought process, and Rogers hesitates slightly before answering.

“We haven’t told anyone you’re here,” He begins, hands tense on the arms of the chair closest to the fireplace, “Fury has been good to us since the Accords, and I believe he’s doing his best to build SHIELD back up, clean this time, but-“

“I don’t trust him,” James cuts in bluntly, “And I don’t quite trust SHIELD, not yet. I can’t be sure they’ve plugged all their holes and finished cleaning house.”

His parallel self levels Bucky with an all too knowing stare as he adds,

“And if it got through to the wrong people that we had four super soldiers in one house – would HYDRA really let that slip through their fingers?”

Of all the nightmares that plague Bucky’s sleep and all the hypothetical threats that plague his waking hours, one overshadows them all: HYDRA reclaiming their property. Their best Asset.

When he had discovered that the other version of himself had suffered through the same traumas that he had, Bucky had been devastated. Deep down, he had hoped that his parallel self would have lived the life he never could; the life of a Bucky Barnes who was never erased and weaponised, or who never even fell off that train. But now, he can only feel relief that James has experienced the same horrors that he has. In this, at least, he understands.

He can’t go back to HYDRA. He’d kill himself before he let them take him. And if it’s a choice between being trapped in this universe for ever, or asking SHIELD for help and risking bringing HYDRA down upon them, he’ll stay right where he is, thanks.

“But still,” Sam pushes, “Stark isn’t HYDRA, and he’s barely even SHIELD.”

“Tony – _our_ Tony – is many things, but he’s not subtle,” James replies with a shake of his head and a fond smile, “He’d come straight here if he knew what was going on, and I’m sure that Fury has eyes on him. I don’t want him involved in this unless there’s no choice. Same with Banner and the others.”

He looks beseechingly to Rogers, who nods sternly in agreement as he lays a hand on James’ back in a physical gesture of his support for his husband’s decision - one that leaves no room for argument.

“Trust me,” Tony announces to a room full of people who decidedly do not trust him, “One of me is more than enough. Two would be overkill. I’ve got this.”

They just have to hope that he’s right.


	9. Overheard

Dinner is quiet, with Tony up to his arms in wires in the security room. Unable to convince the man to tear himself away from his machines for even the length of dinner, Rogers had bought his meal to what is quickly becoming known as ‘Tony’s office’, and left him to it.

Afterwards, they put on a movie – some action thriller with explosions and car chases that Clint had chosen. The film is too asinine and the scene of James laying his head in Rogers’ lap too domestic for Bucky to handle, so he retreats to his room with one of the many books that seem to be on both his and James’ reading lists.

There’s a green velvet and dark mahogany armchair just below the window, so that’s where he settles. From here, he can look out into the forest, and the clear lines of sight soothe the cornered animal that HYDRA put inside of him as he reads.

He spaces in and out like he sometimes does, one moment painfully present and then the next tuning back in and realising he has turned three pages without reading any of the words. Maybe it would be better to burn off some steam in the cabin’s home gym, or strap a knife to his thigh and patrol the perimeter, but it’s getting dark and he knows that Steve will worry if he disappears. Instead, he puts his book down, dog earring the corner in a way he knows drive Steve crazy, and tucks his knees up to his chest. His reflection in the window looks painfully young when he lifts his head to meet his own gaze, arms wrapped tightly around himself and hair in disarray. But the familiar, childlike action quells the urge to run somewhat, so he stays right where he is.

He isn’t sure how much time has passed when he hears Steve’s distinctive heavy gait approaching from the hallway, though he notices that a bright full moon has replaced the last pink dregs of sunset above the treeline. The footsteps reignite the urge to take off in flight, to disappear under cover of darkness and return to the shadow HYDRA meant him to be, but he stays put. He has to face him sooner or later.

The thing is, Bucky – courageous Howling Commando, valiant war hero - has always been a coward. It’s not the word most people would use to describe him; not least because Steve would take their head off if anyone dared to bad mouth his best pal like that. But it’s true.

His survival after days of torture on Zola’s table had not been the act of a valiant soldier; but because he was too scared to die. Following Captain America into the jaws of death instead of accepting an honourable discharge had not been the action of a brave soul; but had been driven by the fear of leaving Steve alone, of losing him, of not being there to finish his fights, as if war were a Brooklyn back alley.

He hadn’t even enlisted, for god’s sake. He had burnt his draft letter in the fireplace and cried over the embers until the orange glow disappeared into nothingness, then put on his best shirt and slacks and made the announcement to his family that he had joined up. Even the pride and respect in Steve’s eyes and the knowledge that the cause was just couldn’t make him feel anything but fear. Let some other kid die in the trenches three thousand miles away. What good was glory if it wasn’t accompanied by Steve’s easy smile, if he couldn’t watch his sisters grow from babies into fine young women, if he couldn’t hold his mother’s gnarled hands when age rendered them useless?

He’s never been brave. He doesn’t feel brave, now. But still, he doesn’t run when Steve enters their room, settling on the edge of the bed closest to where Bucky is curled up in the armchair. He stays put even as silence descends and the minutes tick by.

It’s awkward, and even that hurts, because it has _never_ been awkward. Every silence shared with Steve has been familiar, comfortable, and peaceful. He knows it’s him that’s causing this, not Steve – he knows he’s been cold and dismissive since they arrived, not meeting Steve’s eye and not engaging in their normal easy camaraderie. But right now, he just can’t. Can’t see whatever look has been in Steve’s eyes since James dropped that wedding band shaped bombshell on them in the forest, the look that he hasn’t been brave enough to face head on yet. Be it disgust, pity or rejection, he just can’t bear to see confirmation that this universe has truly, irrevocably diverged from their own.

“Jesse Collins,” Steve blurts out, and – _what_?

“What?” Bucky asks, perplexed, before he remembers the conversation in the forest; his first kiss. From the look on Steve’s face, he’s already figured it out – or James has told him. More likely the latter. Steve has never seen through his careful portrayal of a skirt chaser and ladies man before. He’s bewildered that of all things – particularly the fact that they’re _married_ here – this is what Steve is choosing to focus on, but he humours him anyway.

“Oh,” Bucky says, when Steve doesn’t appear to want to add anything further to his outbursts, “Jesse Collins. The butcher’s son. He was in the grade above.”

Steve nods, not quite making eye contact, and a fierce blush rises up to his blonde eyebrows.

“He was always looking at me,” He adds when Steve remains tight lipped, “And I just knew… I knew he was the same as me. It never really came to anything. He was too spooked by the idea of getting caught to let it continue. And we were just kids, anyway."

There’s a brief pause, in which Steve seems to be steeling himself for something, and then he finally meets Bucky’s gaze head on.

“You didn’t tell me you liked guys. I mean – I thought we told each other everything.”

Now it’s Bucky’s turn to blush. He feels a little pang of guilt, too, at the hint of hurt and betrayal in Steve’s voice.

“Stevie,” He starts evenly, “It was… you know how it was back then. What would have happened to me if people had known. And more importantly, to you.”

“I never would have told anyone, Buck,” He protests with a frown, before the second half of that sentence catches up to him, “Wait, me? Why would anything have happened to me?”

 _Is he serious?_ Bucky thinks, shaking his head in affectionate exasperation.

“Steve, come on,” He begins, “We lived together. One bedroom. Neither of us ever had a steady dame. You were this delicate, artist type – no, don’t argue – and, well. If there were rumours about me, there’d be rumours about you. I could deal with it, took enough girls out dancing to keep people off my trail. But you woulda got the brunt of it.”

Steve has that particular look on his face that he gets when he knows Bucky is right, but he wants to argue anyway.

“But I wouldn’t have ever let on, pal. I never woulda put you in danger like that. Why couldn’t you tell me?”

This parts harder, because there’s no answer that Bucky can cleanly give him.

_Because if I started talking, I wouldn’t have been able to stop? Because if I told you I like men, I would have told you I liked blonde men, with blue eyes, and artist’s hands? Because if I asked you to accept me, I would be asking you to accept that I love you, too?_

“I didn’t want you to look at me –“

_Like you did out in the forest, when you realised we were together here-_

“ – like there was something wrong with me, or you felt bad for me,” He finishes lamely, tilting his head down until his hair cascades over his eyes, obscuring Steve’s view of his face.

“I’d never look at you any different, Buck,” Steve tells him, and his smile is so sincere that Bucky desperately wants to believe him.

But he can’t. He knows, deep down, that their relationship would never be the same if Steve knew everything about him.

“I liked them fine, the dames. They were fun, good dancers; pretty. But they never did anything for me,” Bucky tells him honestly, wanting to let him in a little, show that he trusts Steve with this after all.

“Oh,” Steve replies, seeming a little shocked, “I thought – I assumed that you just liked both. That’s a thing, now, with a word and everything. Bisexual.”

“I know what bisexual means, Steve,” Bucky answers, amused, “But it’s not me.”

“But Dot – you remember Dot? – you went out a bunch, seemed like you really liked her. Kept breaking up and then getting back together, remember?”

A little calmer now, Bucky lets his knees fall away from his chest and plants his feet back on the floor, leaning in to whispering conspiratorially;

“Dot had a girl of her own. We just went out to throw her Pa off the scent.”

He laughs when Steve blushes, looking a touch scandalised, before he tentatively asks;

“And you didn’t – you didn’t have a fella?”

And Christ, how can he answer that? _He had a fella the whole time._ The whole damn time. It’s just that his fella didn’t like fellas, and didn’t love him back.

There were others, of course. Bucky had acted on his desires, in that bar in the seedy part of Brooklyn that people walked by a little too fast, or with men who looked at him for a little too long down by the docks. There had even been a few guys he got to know a little better; he stayed the night with some, smoking cigarettes and swapping stories with all the names changed just in case the other was a cop. And one fella in the army, when he’d been in North Africa before Steve was ever Captain America – he might have even been a little in love with that one.

But his own inability to commit had ended all those potential relationships – except for the latter, which was ended by a handful of bullets and a hand grenade.

“Nah,” He says dismissively, a smile tugging at his lips but not quite meeting his eyes, “Just never met the right person, I guess.”

The lie echoes in his head like words from that little red book as they dress for bed, and he can’t meet his own eyes in the mirror when he brushes his teeth. It doesn’t stop when he lies next to Steve, holding himself so still to avoid reaching out that he feels as though he’ll shatter if Steve accidentally brushes against him.

He thinks about the words, and he thinks about the lie, but he refuses to think about why Steve looked so disappointed when he said it. He was probably just imagining it, anyway.

* * *

When he wakes up, he can hear himself moaning in pain. It’s not unusual – sometimes his mind breaks free of a nightmare before his body does, and he wakes still groaning under imagined torture or lashing out blindly against unseen assailants.

But this time, his mouth is clamped firmly shut when he hears the moan again.

It’s his voice, but not him. And, _oh_.

Not a moan of pain after all.

Truth be told he hadn’t given too much consideration to the fact that their bedroom shared a wall with James and Rogers’. Now, it’s painfully clear that he should have foreseen this. The pair could barely keep their hands off each other throughout the day, after all.

“ _Mmm, Bucky…”_

 _Jesus Christ,_ he doesn’t want to be here for this, with Steve tucked up next to him, so close he could touch. So close he can almost imagine leaning over and making his Steve moan like that, too.

As long as Steve stays asleep, he can slip quietly out of bed and into the living room, so he doesn’t have to hear this, and Steve will never have to hear this either –

There is a slight rustle of the sheets and a sharp intake of breath beside him, and he knows that it’s too late. Steve is already awake.

They lay in complete silence, unnaturally still and not even daring to breathe. Steve must be able to tell that he, too, is awake, but neither of them say anything. Beyond the wall, soft muttering continues.

“ _So good for me, Buck_ ,” and his own pleasured gasps, coupled by a sharp groan from Rogers.

The blush that rises across his whole upper body _burns_ , knowing that Steve is mere inches away from him with only mattress between them. He knows that Steve’s hearing is sensitive enough to hear it too, the way his own voice is begging;

“ _Harder, Stevie, please!”_

Suddenly, he heard his own laugh from the other room, breathless with delight, and it’s -

Bucky thinks he hasn’t cried since 1945 - when they had dragged that crackling television into his cell to play the news reel announcing Captain America’s death on repeat for what felt like days - but he can feel tears building behind his eyelids once again. Had he ever laughed during sex? Had he ever sounded so happy, so carefree, been in the arms of someone he trusted enough to let go completely?

Choking back tears, he reviews his options. He has no idea what his stamina is like – hasn’t sought out another warm body since he came home from HYDRA, and hasn’t been able to bear to touch himself, too disgusted by the cold metal of his own hand. But he has to assume that a super soldier’s stamina is robust in _every_ way, so they could be here for some time. And to add insult to injury, he can feel himself slowly hardening in his pyjama pants. Does he continue lying as still as possible and pretending to be asleep? Could he silently slip out of bed and get as far from here as physically possible? Should he turn around and tell Steve – just, just tell him -

“I love you, _oh_ , I love you,” He hears Rogers whisper to James, and it breaks his fucking heart.

That’s the final straw for him. Steve must know he’s awake at this point, his breathing ragged enough that it feels like he’s on the edge of a panic attack, so he doesn’t even bother with subtlety. He just flees. He’s up and out of bed, out of the room, before Steve can even sit up to see him go, and he doesn’t look back.


	10. Night Talks

Steve wakes up to the sound of his own pleasured groans, and he doesn’t think it’s possible to be more mortified.

He immediately proves himself wrong, of course, when he hears a sharp intake of breathe from beside him which indicates that Bucky is awake, too – and there’s no way he’s not hearing this.

He’s lying in bed with his best friend only inches away, and they’re listening to themselves have loud, athletic sex on the other side of the wall.

 _How is this his life_?

He can hear Bucky – _James_ , he reminds himself – moaning his name, and it feels as though lava has been poured through his veins. The rhythmic _bang-bang-bang_ of the headboard against the shared wall, combined with the choked off gasps and groans they can hear, is conjuring images into his head quicker than he can dispel them;

Bucky, laid out underneath him, brown hair splayed out on the pillow around him like a halo and blue eyes clouded with lust. Himself, parting Bucky’s thick thighs, caressing the soft skin there as Bucky opens up to him so sweetly. The two of them, moving together as one, unable to swallow down the noises of pleasure as it builds and builds -

Steve had been hard as a rock almost instantly upon hearing Bucky’s – _James’_ – breathy moans of his name, and all he can do now is lie perfectly still and hope that Bucky doesn’t notice.

“ _Steve, please…_ ”

And James is… there’s no word for it other than _begging_ , and _my god_ , is it getting Steve hot and bothered. He didn’t think he was into that kind of thing, but here they are.

He didn’t think he’d been into any of this, actually. Men. Even though he can’t see what’s going on behind the wall, he can imagine it. Can’t stop himself imagining it, really. The voice on the other side of the wall, the warm body beside him, and the image of James in his mind’s eye are all decidedly male, and to his surprise, it doesn’t bother him at all. The opposite, in fact – he hasn’t felt this turned on since… well, maybe ever.

Steve doesn’t dare breathe, let alone shift to make himself more comfortable. He’s lying partially on his side, hips pressed tightly to the mattress, and the urge to push down into it is almost unbearable. But he doesn’t dare move a muscle with Bucky wide awake beside him.

Throwing caution to the wind, Steve cracks his eyes open, just enough to check that Bucky really _is_ awake, too. Beside him, Bucky is flat on his back, and he ignores the traitorous part of his brain that tells him how easy it would be to lean over and slot himself between his friend's ample thighs. His hair is splayed out across the pillow just as it had been in his imagination, and his blue eyes are squeezed tightly shut as though he is trying to block out the noise from beyond the wall, which shows no sign of stopping.

Suddenly, there is a particularly loud moan from next door and muttered words that Steve doesn’t quite catch, and Bucky bursts from the bed with a turn of speed so great that Steve barely sees him go. One minute he’s curled up next to him, and the next the sheets are cold and empty and the door is swinging on its hinges.

Steve is concerned, of course, but right now he’s mostly relieved that Bucky has disappeared. It’s becoming harder to resist grinding his hips into the mattress, and he thinks if he had had to endure much more of this with Bucky next to him he would _really_ embarrass himself.

On the other side of the wall, the married couple have gotten suspiciously quiet – it’s unclear whether they had finished, or whether they had heard Bucky leave and gotten spooked, but either way, Steve is glad it’s over.

Listening hard to the abrupt silence beyond the wall, Steve flops onto his back with a resigned sigh. The temptation to wrap a hand around himself now that he’s alone is almost too strong to resist, but he manages it. Instead, a five minute, freezing cold shower sorts out his _problem_ \- he’s not sure he can do it… manually, without thinking of Bucky, and it feels like a betrayal, when Bucky was so clearly uncomfortable with the thought of them together like _that_.

 _Jesus,_ he has a lot to think about – the revelation that he wouldn’t really mind being with a man comes as a shock, although it’s not like he has much experience with women, either. Him and Peggy never really got around to it, and all those double dates Bucky set him up with were never interested. Truth be told, he’s never actually…

Well, he’s never been with anyone. But he thinks – if he lets himself think about it – that he wouldn’t really mind if his first time was with a man or a woman.

There’s something else to think about too – the fact that those images that crawled into his head unbidden weren’t of some random man. They were of _Bucky_.

But of course they were – it was Bucky’s voice screaming his name while he was getting… whatever they were doing, and it was Bucky’s warm body curled up next to him. It was simply the power of suggestion – it doesn’t mean anything more than that, right?

Besides, he can’t think about this right now. Bucky had just fled their bedroom in the middle of the night, clearly distressed, and god knows where he is now.

Half-heartedly drying his hair and stepping into some sweatpants, Steve leaves the bedroom in search of Bucky.

He follows a gentle murmuring to a room with a light on at the end of the hall, bracing himself for whatever horrifically awkward conversation him and Bucky are going to have to have, but to his surprise, Bucky is not who he finds.

When Steve’s massive shoulders appears in the doorway, Tony – cocky, arrogant, not-scared-of-anything Tony Stark – actually flinches, just a little, and it hurts Steve to see. He hadn’t really stopped to think how hard this must be for Tony; trapped with people who he feels betrayed him (and people who feel he betrayed them right back), _two_ versions of his father’s killer, and no way to get back to Pepper. They have no idea if time is passing normally in their own world, or if time is even passing at all – and while Steve’s whole world is here with him, in Bucky and to some extent Sam, Tony is all but alone in this strange place.

He nods to Tony, and Tony nods back, shoulders relaxing slightly when he realises that Steve has not dragged himself out of bed for another petty argument.

Slowly, Tony begins to extract himself from where is elbow deep in wires that are connected to James’ perimeter detection system, and takes a large gulp of what must be extremely cold coffee once he’s free.

“What’s got you up so late – or early, I guess?” Tony asks, looking to the clock on the wall like he’s seeing it for the first time. _Has he really been in here all night?_

“Um,” Steve replies eloquently, grateful for the low light so that Tony won’t see the red blush that burns through him, “Just couldn’t sleep, I guess.”

Tony gives him a suspicious side eye, but doesn’t press the issue, for which Steve is grateful. Instead, he waves a hand to the sofa in the corner of the room, inviting Steve to sit.

Taking the gesture as the peace offering it’s clearly meant to be, he settles against one of the arms of the couch, keeping the open door in his line of sight in case Bucky returns. The silence is awkward, even with this tentative 3am truce that they seem to have struck, and Tony still seems to be puzzling something out, wearing the same expression that had not quite left his face since they met James in the forest.

“That’s why you did it?” Tony asks out of nowhere after the silence weighs too heavily on both of them, “You chose him over the Avengers, the Accords, the shield, me? Because you love him?”

There is no need to specify who he’s talking about. There is only one person Steve would – and has- risked everything for.

The question sounds accusatory, but there is uncharacteristic gentleness in Tony’s voice, and for a second Steve had no idea how to answer at all.

“Of course I love him,” Steve answers with a frown. Surely, after everything, Tony knows that, “He’s my best friend. He’s been there my whole life.”

Tony rolls his eyes, setting his novelty sized coffee cup down and missing the coaster entirely.

“Don’t be dense, Cap,” He replies through a sad smile, “I don’t mean ‘brothers-in-arms’ love. I mean matching wedding bands, cabin in the wilderness, dog with a stupid fairytale character name love.”

“That’s Rogers and James,” Steve tells him honestly through the dizzy feeling building behind his forehead, “Not us.”

It’s true. They don’t have that. They don’t have any of that.

But since he’s been there, he’s been thinking.

Before they came here, he had known he loved Bucky more than anything. He’d kill for Bucky, and he’d die for him – in a way, he’s done both of those things, and Bucky has done the same for him. This is the man that was there for him, through thick and thin, before anyone else. The man who taught him how to dance and tie a tie, who rubbed his back and held him when fever and coughs overtook his frail body, who let him cry on his shoulder at his mother’s funeral, who followed him into the heart of war when he himself was broken beyond belief. He has always known that he loved Bucky: like a brother, a best friend, a lifelong companion.

But lately, he’s been thinking there might be something more. Looking at James and Rogers is like looking into a dream that he didn’t know he had. The quiet intimacy and soft touches cause an aching hole to open up in the centre of his chest that he can only identify as _longing._ The way that Rogers can put his hands on James whenever he wants - to hold him or comfort him, or to just feel that they’re both here and real and alive – fills him with what is surely jealousy. And in bed, earlier… that had felt like the final piece of the puzzle. If Bucky is everything too him, if he wants to spend the rest of his life with him, if he would die for him, and if he wants him physically, too – is that not love?

Not brotherly love – but _love?_

Or is this all just the influence of James and Rogers and the power of suggestion, their love convincing him of feelings he doesn't truly hold? Is he just reaching for something to fix the perpetual loneliness that has haunted him since he woke up alone and out of time in this century- since the only man who truly new him plummeted to his death in the alps?

_What's real, and what's not? What's Steve and Bucky, and what's Rogers and James?_

He feels dizzy with the mixed emotions and conflicting information his brain is providing him. Every time he thinks he's reached a conclusion, his traitorous mind forces him to reconsider, and every time he is sure he feels nothing but friendship for Bucky, an emptiness seizes his heart and begs him to look deeper.

Tony is looking at him expectantly, as though he has just handed Steve a complex equation and is waiting for him to crack it.

“That’s not us. Bucky isn't James,” He repeats, and it’s true. Whatever revelations he may have come to tonight, they don’t really matter if Bucky feels nothing for him, “You’ve seen the way he’s acting. How uncomfortable even the idea of us being together like that makes him,” Steve adds in a tone of resignation, “I’m not going to jeopardise our friendship for anything.”

The look Tony fixes him with is difficult to translate, but Steve things that it is equal parts _you’re a fucking idiot_ and _please end my suffering._

“You know what?” Stark tells him, shaking his head in disbelief, “You take your time. It’s not like we’re going anywhere anytime soon.”

He gestures to the piles of wires and pieces of Stark tech in front of him that are meant to be forming their escape route. With a sigh of frustration and defeat, he sweeps the parts into one corner of the desk, and lays his head in the gap they leave on the wooden table top with a heavy _thunk_.

Steve isn’t quite sure how to respond to that, but it seems that Tony has already moved on to a new subject, so he blessedly doesn’t have to try.

“This isn’t an apology,” Tony starts with a sign, which. _Okay._ Not really where Steve was expecting this to go, but he can roll with it.

“You don’t need-“

“Shut up,” Tony cuts him off sharply, finally lifting his head from the table “Let me get through this.”

His former friend takes a deep breathe, a determined look settling over his features as he speaks.

“Look, I know… I saw his files. The Winter Soldier files. More of them than were in that initial SHIELD leak. There’s probably a lot I still haven’t seen. And it was…” He breaks off, unable to meet Steve’s eye, “The things they did to him should never have been done to a human being. He should be dead 100 times over.”

A long pause while he scratches his goatee, and then:

“I’m still angry, about my parents, of course I am – but I can see that he didn’t choose any of this, either. I might have…”

“Been wrong?” Steve finishes, hope swelling in his chest as Tony fixes him with a sharp glare.

“I’ve never been wrong in my life,” He says firmly, “Not once. But I might have been… partially mistaken due to lack of information.”

That’s as close to an apology or admission of guilt as he will ever get from Tony Stark, and honestly, it’s more than Steve could have hoped for. Standing so suddenly it makes Tony jump, Steve leans over to grip Tony’s shoulder tightly in a brotherly gesture, the first physical contact they’ve had in almost a year, in gratitude.

“I’m not, like, suddenly BFF’s with your Tin Man now,” Tony adds quickly, squirming a little under Steve’s hand, but Steve is still moved by Tony’s admission.

“Thank you, Tony,” He says, and he means it. He’s happy to have made a small step towards reconciliation with Tony, but most of all, he’s pleased for Bucky. They haven’t discussed it, but Steve can tell that Bucky has been wracked with guilt over Howard’s death and Steve and Tony’s fall out. To be able to knock one thing of the list of things Bucky is punishing himself for is nothing short of a victory.

He leaves the office before Tony can change his mind and take back his partial apology, determined to find Bucky – not just to check that he’s okay after… earlier, but to tell him about his conversation with Tony.

He retreats back to their bedroom to make sure that Bucky hasn’t returned, and is not surprised to find it empty. Instead, Steve grabs a pair of boots and a warm jacket, anticipating that Bucky will have retreated onto the porch, if not escaped into the forest.

But to his surprise, Bucky hasn’t left the building at all. As he make his way through the living room towards the front door, a slight movement catches his eye.

Bucky is curled up under a blanket on the couch, twitching and mumbling slightly in his sleep, looking so soft and young that Steve can’t bear to wake him up. Approaching as quietly as possible, he looks down at his old friend from the back of the sofa, pushing a stray strand of brown hair away from his face. Steve’s heart clenches at the way that Bucky is frowning slightly in his sleep, plagued by the bad dreams that haunt his waking hours, too. But even like this, he looks more at ease than he has the entire rest of the time they’ve been here. To wake him up now, in the middle of the night, to have a conversation that will almost certainly distress him, would make Steve feel like a monster.

They can talk tomorrow. Like Tony said – it’s not like they’re going anywhere.


	11. Alone Together

The following morning, Bucky wakes from a nightmare, sweating profusely and fighting off a thick blanket as he catches his breathe. He doesn’t remember the dream, and for that he can only be grateful.

What he does remember, however, is last night.

Hearing his own voice moaning out Steve’s name, and Steve - _Rogers,_ he reminds himself - answering in kind had been… painful, to say the least. Of all the parallel universes they could have ended up in, Bucky can't think of a worse one than this - one that serves as a constant reminder of everything he's ever wanted, and everything he can't ever have.

He had run from Steve, then, retreating to the living room and curling up on the couch like a child after a bad dream. But he couldn’t outrun the mortification and embarrassment at his own desire being laid bare like that for Steve to hear – and there is no way that Steve didn’t hear it.

Blanket successfully beaten into submission, Bucky finally rises from the sofa, feeling like he’s been awake for days despite just waking up. It’s still early, the sun barely peeking out from atop the pines, but from deeper within the cabin he can hear the sounds of showers turning on and drawers being opened as the others awaken.

He can’t face breakfast. It’s not just Steve, this time – it’s James and Rogers he can’t stand to look at now, too. And the others – with how loud the couple was being, it’s entirely possible that the entire house heard them, and the thought of looking Tony in the eye after that fills him with dread.

Greta provides him with the perfect out, rising from her luxurious bed by the fireplace to paw affectionately at his leg with a big dopey puppy grin. A long walk around the perimeter will do them both good, and by the time he returns, breakfast and any awkward conversations that it brings will be over.

* * *

The afternoon brings everything that Bucky was dreading.

He had stayed out with Greta for as long as physically possible – until she started to slow and tire, which is not an easy state to reach with such a hyperactive dog. Sure enough, breakfast had finished when he returned, and the others were preparing for the day ahead. Clint had agreed to accompany James to the nearest grocery store in the town closest to the edge of the forest– the amount of food needed to sustain 3 Avengers and 4 Super Soldiers was no laughing matter – and Sam and Steve had gone for a run on the forest trail that surrounded the property, seemingly having just missed Bucky and Greta on their own patrol. Tony was locked up in the office again, growing increasingly frustrated with his own technology and lack of resources in the cabin - and apart from the occasional muffled bang and curse, it was like he wasn’t even there.

That just left Bucky and Rogers.

Since their arrival, Bucky has been avoiding this Steve even more than his own, almost never speaking directly to him or letting him make eye contact, and he knows that both James and Rogers have noticed. He thinks that James orchestrated this – making sure he was totally alone with Rogers while the rest of the household were otherwise engaged – to force them to interact.

But the only thing worse than a Steve who doesn’t love him back is one that _does,_ but already has a Bucky of his own, and being alone with him hurts like hell.

“I thought I’d make that potato soup,” Rogers tells him with a nervous smile when they are well and truly alone in the kitchen, “The one your Ma used to make, remember?”

Bucky remembers, just barely. It’s familiar, setting out the ingredients and starting the soothing process of peeling the large bag of potatoes before them. Although he can’t quite bring an image of his mother in the kitchen to mind, he knows in the back of his mind that the recipe is the same.

“We’re not in the Depression anymore you know,” Bucky quips, “You don’t have to make Ma’s potato gruel because we can’t afford anything else.”

He doesn’t mean it – he loves his Ma’s cooking – and from the smile tugging at the corner of Rogers’ lips, he knows it too.

“Winnie Barnes woulda slapped you upside the head for a comment like that, Buck.”

They fall into companionable silence – so unlike the awkward silence fraught with tension that has sat between himself and his Steve since they arrived here. And if he’s being honest, even before that – Bucky can’t remember the last time they had a conversation about their shared past like this. Steve walks on eggshells around him these days, well-intentioned but too scared of saying the wrong thing and upsetting or triggering Bucky to really relax around him. Meanwhile, Bucky is too scared to admit there are still large gaps in his memory, and that he is no longer the person he was – Steve is only sticking around for that Bucky, after all. He has to keep pretending to be him for as long as possible.

With this other Steve, it’s different. He is clearly used to a more stable, recovered James, and so he doesn’t treat him like he’s about to break or overthink his words. It’s comfortable and familiar, and the pang of want in his chest settles deeper and deeper with every second they spend together.

But of course, it can’t stay comfortable forever. Not when they have the shadow of their relationship hanging over them. Sure enough, they’re only half way into the pile of potatoes before them when Rogers seems to lose an internal battle he’s having with himself and puts down his knife, resting both hands on the counter as if bracing himself.

“You’re really not together?” Rogers asks hesitantly, pulling a face as though it pains him to even ask.

Bucky is silent as he continues peeling the potatoes, but his lack of response is more telling than words could ever be.

“You know that he loves you, right?” Rogers tries again, and Bucky shakes his head, a mildly hysterical laugh escaping him.

“He’s not actually you, you know,” Bucky tells him with a bitter smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes, “He doesn’t feel anything for me other than friendship.”

Rogers sighs, shaking his head - but no version of Steve Rogers ever truly knows when to quit.

“Bucky, I just don’t believe that. I just can’t,” Rogers answers, clearly frustrated, “I’m gonna talk to him. Me. I mean, Steve. About you and him– “

“NO,” Bucky snaps instantly, potato peeler clattering down to the countertop, “I don’t want that.”

Rogers doesn’t say anything in response, just looks at him for a long moment before reaching under Bucky’s arms to retrieve the potato peeler and carry on their preparations. Bucky busies himself filling a pot with water so he doesn’t have to meet the other man’s eye in the aftermath of his outburst. 

He mentally begs for Rogers to change the subject, and eventually, he does. After a tense period of silence, Rogers sighs and puts down the peeler, turning his body to face Bucky directly and wearing the same expression of nervous determination that he gets before jumping out of a plane without a parachute. He looks anxious, opening and closing his mouth a few times without any words coming out as if building up to something, and rubbing at his arm in a nervous tick that even the serum couldn’t get rid of.

“My Bucky- James, I mean - had this idea. That he thought you might... I mean he said it would be alright, if...” Rogers stumbles nervously, eyes darting from Bucky’s wide blue eyes to his parted lips, “I mean, I’m trying to say, that if you wanted – he said it would be ok, if…”

The other man just can’t seem to get the words out in any order that makes sense, and Bucky struggles to see what could have gotten Rogers so tongue tied. Rogers shakes his head as if to dispel whatever thoughts are tripping him up, and takes a deep breathe before he says;

“He said you could kiss me, if you wanted. To know what it was like.”

Bucky’s brain short-circuits, and it must show on his face because Rogers rushes to provide justification.

“He said that he thinks of you as him, the same, I mean, so it’s not cheating,” He adds quickly, “It’s just...what he would want, he said. If he didn’t have me, and he had an opportunity to kiss me, even just once, he would take it. He wanted to give you that choice. And I – well, I more than don’t mind.”

Rogers is blushing, and Bucky can’t make his jaw close where his mouth has fallen open in shock. Beneath his surprise he feels the beginning of anger rising – does the other version of himself really thing he’s that pathetic? That desperate for affection that he would throw himself on another version of the man that doesn’t want him – one that is already spoken for?

But at the same time, he _does_ want it – badly. As mortified as he is, he can’t help but think it over.

He has one opportunity to kiss the man that he has been in love with for almost a century – or at least a near-identical version of him. An opportunity that will never, ever come again. He could find out what it would be like – if it would be perfect, like his in his imagination, fireworks and all. He could pretend, just for a second, that it was real.

He could do it. It would probably hurt worse, in the long run, knowing what it was like and that he would never have the real thing, but he could do it.

Rogers is looking at him patiently, a hint of a blush on his pale cheeks as he waits for an answer. It’s the kindness in his ocean blue eyes that makes up Bucky’s mind for him – there’s no judgement there, no matter what he chooses.

On shaky legs, Bucky approaches Rogers, not breaking eye contact as he does so. He lets out the shuddering breathe that he didn’t even realise he was holding as he places a trembling hand on Rogers cheek and leans in ever so slightly.

He hesitates a moment too long, until Rogers takes the initiative and leans in to kiss him.

It’s better than he ever could have imagined. They come together like two puzzle pieces; like two halves of a whole. Rogers palm fits perfectly at the base of his spine like it belongs there, and his thick beard scratching against his cheek sends fire coursing through Bucky’s veins. He lips are soft and open under Bucky’s and it feels _right,_ even if he knows that it isn’t real. He opens up underneath Rogers embrace, allowing his tongue entrance as the heat sizzling in the tight space between their bodies grows.

It's perfect, until it's not.

“What the fuck is going on here?” A voice growls from the doorway, and. _Shit._

Steve is standing by the front door, gaping into the kitchen with his jaw hanging open in pure confusion. Before them, his expression morphs from shock to rage, as Bucky practically throws himself across the room in an effort to get away from Rogers. Rogers takes a large step back too, putting some distance between himself and Bucky, but it’s too late.

The damage has already been done. Steve has already seen.

Steve takes several furious steps into the kitchen, stalking towards Rogers until he is nose to nose with his parallel self, while Sam stands awkwardly in the doorway, unsure of what to do or say and looking more bewildered than ever.

Bucky can't do anything at all as he watches the two men square up to each other - he's simply paralysed, wishing the ground would open up and swallow him whole to save him from the humiliation and the uncertainty of what Steve will do next.

“How could you cheat on James?” Steve demands, angrily stabbing a finger into the centre of Rogers broad chest as he growls directly into his parallel self's face. Rogers, whose body language had been calm and placating before Steve spoke, becomes visibly defensive upon hearing the accusation, rolling his shoulders angrily as he snaps back;

“I’m not! I would never. It was Bucky’s idea – I mean, my Bucky. _James_. It was his suggestion.”

“So you just thought you would throw yourself on my- on _this_ Bucky because your Bucky gave you permission? This Bucky doesn’t want you. Hasn’t he had enough of his choices being taken from him?” Steve cries impassionedly, which is so far from what is actually going on here that Bucky feels a near-hysterical laugh bubbling up inside of him.

“Stevie,” Bucky stands, swallowing it down and holding his hands up in a calming gesture - but he has no idea how the sentence will end. _Actually, I did want him, but only because I could pretend he was you? Actually, I’m so desperate with longing for you that I’ll take anything I can get from him? Actually, he didn’t throw himself at me, he barely even had to ask before I was throwing myself at him?_

He’s saved from having to finish that thought by the door swinging open once again.

“Honey, we’re home!” Clint sing-songs as he and James drag bags of groceries into the entrance hall. While Clint seems to have gotten away with carrying a bag of carrots and some toilet paper, James is carrying enough to put a pack mule to shame. Putting down the bags in the corner of the kitchen, the pair finally seem to take in the tense silence and the two Steve’s who look to be on the verge of breaking out into a fist fight.

James’ eyes widen in understanding as he looks between Bucky’s fierce blush, Rogers’ sheepishness and Steve’s simmering rage. 

“Everything good here?” He asks tentatively, as Clint looks on in confusion, not privy to the same information about what went down here. There's a horrible beat of silence where no one answers. Bucky can only hang his head in humiliation, while neither Steve nor Rogers seem willing to back down from their staring match for long enough to address James' question.

Reading the room, Sam inclines his head towards Clint, and then the door, in a no-nonsense _we’re leaving right now_ gesture, and the two depart, leaving the four super soldiers alone.

“Well?” James asks again when he doesn’t get a response. Steve is still up in Rogers face, anger almost palpable and seemingly unaware of Bucky’s increasing distress and James’ concern.

“No one was taking his choice away or forcing themselves on him,” Rogers snarls, ignoring James to continue his argument with Steve, “How the fuck could you accuse me of that? Like I don’t know what he’s been through, everything they did to him?”

The tension is rising, and it worries Bucky enough that he can’t even find it in himself to be angry at the way he is being talked about, like he isn’t even here and can’t make his own choices. Instead, he wracks his brain desperately for a way to deescalate the situation. These two could do real damage to each other if they start swinging, and if Steve gets them all kicked out of the cabin, they’ll be lost and alone in a universe that isn’t their own. But Bucky has known Steve long enough to know that there is no talking him down from a fight – not even with himself.

He looks desperately to James for help, hoping he will have a trick up his sleeve to stop this before it starts. James only sighs, apparently taking pity on him as he says;

“Alright, you’re not throwing down in my kitchen. Those granite counter tops are _brand new_. Both of you, outside. You’re scaring Greta.”

Both Steves’ eyes immediately flick to where Greta is lying on the living room floor, chewing idly on a toy and looking completely unbothered by the commotion. But James’ tone left no room for debate, and Steve does, to Bucky’s surprise, take a small step back from where he was practically breathing down Rogers’ neck.

“Fine,” He snaps, “Outside.”

Steve turns on his heels without paying Bucky so much as a glance, still simmering with rage, and closes the front door behind him with a bang. In the aftermath, Rogers meets Bucky’s eye and opens his mouth to say something – an apology, perhaps. But Bucky simply does not want to hear it.

“Its fine,” he says hurriedly before Rogers can get a word in, even though it is quite obviously fucking not. But it seems to do the trick, and Rogers’ nods sharply before hesitantly heading for the front door for his confrontation with Steve.

As he watches Rogers disappear out the door, and meets James’ sympathetic and pitying gaze, Bucky wonders how he possibly could have made this situation worse.


	12. Heart to Heart

Steve’s heart had stopped as soon as he and Sam had set foot in the cabin.

There, in the kitchen, Rogers and James were locked in a heated embrace, and for a second he thought that James and Clint must have returned from the store early.

But then he saw it; a ringless hand, and the flash of a metal arm. Black, not gold.

This was _his_ Bucky.

Steve had felt a thousand things all at once at that revelation; confusion, anger, betrayal. Seeing someone else with their hands on Bucky – even when it was his own hands – sent one feeling raging through him that was stronger than any other; one that he could only describe as _jealousy_.

Truth be told, identifying that feeling had shocked him almost much as seeing the two of them together had.

But anger had quickly overtaken the other feeling before he could dwell on it too long. The whole time they had been here, Bucky had been visibly uncomfortable and distressed at the thought of him and Steve being together - he would practically flinch at every kiss and embrace and heated look that James and Rogers shared. It was beyond obvious to Steve that Bucky had no interest in him like that – hell, Bucky would barely look either version of him in the eye.

Rogers _must_ have seen Bucky's complete disinterest and distress. He must have known, just as Steve knows, that Bucky doesn't want anything to do with him romantically or sexually. For Rogers to just cast aside Bucky's agency, autonomy and _consent_ to paw at him like some horny animal as soon as James left the house? That made Steve so mad he could barely resist taking a swing at himself. 

Their worlds must have diverged even more than they had figured out, for that to have happened. Steve would _never_ cheat on Bucky if they were together, even with another version of him. He would _never_ throw himself at Bucky, knowing how much Bucky didn’t want him. And he would most certainly _never_ ignore Bucky’s consent and force himself on his friend, especially given all that Bucky had been through and the way his autonomy had been withheld from him for _decades._

Rogers had denied it all, of course. He had claimed that James had given him permission to kiss the other Bucky – he’d even said that it was James’ idea. And honestly, James’ instant understanding and unfazed reaction to the situation did indicate that that was true.

He had also outright said that he wasn’t forcing himself on Bucky, and that he would never, given Bucky’s history. But that would mean-

That would mean that Bucky had wanted it, too.

By the time a tentative Rogers joins him outside, the fight has mostly left them both. Jealously, the emotion whose presence he can’t quite explain, still lingers, but mostly he feels confused. Rogers seems to sense his change in mood, and lowers his shoulders slightly, no longer on guard. Realising that they haven’t come out here to punch each other after all, Rogers sits down on the bottom step of the porch with a sigh, and indicates for Steve to sit beside him.

Its late afternoon, a cool autumn breeze cutting through the trees and brushing along the piles of fallen leaves on the forest floor. This was always Bucky’s favourite weather – although that had less to do with the weather itself, or Bucky for that matter, and more to do with Steve. The heights of summer with its heatstroke, sunburn and pollen held dangers for Steve’s fragile body in their youth, as did the bitter chill and knee-high snow of a New York winter. Autumn was as safe as any season could be for someone as sickly as Steve Rogers, and that was when they could explore; when Steve could walk along the beaches and breathe in the clean sea air for miles without getting out of breathe, and when Bucky could sit beside Steve and his sketch pad in the park, describing the sunset hues of the falling leaves so his friend could draw them accurately despite his colour-blindness.

As the sit in the tranquil clearing, Greta peeps her head out through the little dog door built into their real front door and trots out to meet them, laying down at the bottom of the steps between them and letting Rogers run a soothing hand through her fur.

“Did you always know?” Steve asks Rogers gently, and there is no need to specify who or what he means.

“I think I did. I just couldn’t quite bring those feelings to the surface, or focus on them enough to identify them. I was - Sam says the word is ‘ _repressed_ ’,” Rogers tells him honestly, rubbing at his arm in a nervous tick that is painfully familiar to Steve, “I think if Bucky - James – hadn’t taken that first step, I never would have put it together. Or I would have, when it was too late, and he had already found someone else.”

Steve nods, mostly to himself, as he takes it in. It’s surprising, given how intimate Rogers and James are with each other, that Rogers hadn’t realised their love for each other until James was brave enough to take a leap of faith and kiss him on that fateful afternoon in Bucharest. To know and love someone for nearly 100 years without realising you were _in_ love would be remarkably dense.

But isn’t that what Bucky has always, affectionately, called him?

“I didn’t force myself on him,” Rogers adds more gently, “I hope you know that there is no universe in which a Steve Rogers is able to hurt a Bucky Barnes like that.”

Steve had known that, deep down, he thinks. But if that kiss had been given with consent…

“I asked if he wanted to. On James’ suggestion. And it’s not like I mind, you know? Bucky is still James,” Rogers adds with a sly smile, “And he said yes.”

Bucky had wanted it. He had wanted to kiss Rogers.

 _God,_ is this why he had been avoiding them both so passionately? Is this why he reacted so badly to overhearing Rogers and James last night? Had he been jealous?

Had he been falling for Rogers?

“So he’s in love with you,” Steve verbalises, knowing he sounds like a petulant child but unable to keep the feeling out of his voice, “He’s fallen in love with a parallel universe version of me.”

Rogers seems genuinely speechless at that, gaping at him with an expression not unlike the one Steve wore whenever he was introduced to new technology after he was pulled from the ice; perplexed and dumbfounded.

“Steve,” Rogers says bluntly, hand stilling in Greta's fur, “We are _not_ this stupid.”

But that has to be the answer. There is no other way he can spin this. The only explanation for Bucky’s reactions to their marriage, his staunch avoidance of Steve, and his willingness to kiss Rogers, would be if-

If he were in love with Steve.

But Steve’s own reactions have been strange, too. The pit in his stomach that opened up when he first saw the wedding ring on Bucky’s finger, and the images that flooded his brain when he heard them making love. The jealousy and protectiveness he felt when this other version of himself had his hands all over Bucky. It’s almost as if-

“Oh,” Steve begins, realisation dawning painfully slowly, “I think-

He’s cut off, however, when Tony throws open the front door, having left the office for the first time all day and practically vibrating with uncharacteristic excitement;

“I’ve got something. I’ve found a signal.”


	13. Preparations

James steps in to help Bucky finish the soup in Rogers’ absence.

It’s strange – he hasn’t spent all that much time alone with his doppelgänger since they arrived. Catching a glimpse of his own face out of the corner of his eye, or reaching for something at the exact same time is not something Bucky will ever get used to. 

Hopefully, they won’t be here long enough to _need_ to get used to it. Bucky doesn’t have much faith in Tony as a person – but he’s certainly one of the smartest people Bucky has ever met, and probably one of the smartest people in the world. Bucky thinks that Tony even surpasses his father -

But this isn’t the time to start thinking about Howard.

There are other things on his mind, anyway. Like how Steve and Rogers are probably tearing chunks out of each other outside. As he sets the soup to simmer, he strains his enhanced hearing, but the garden is strangely silent.

“Don’t be nervous,” James tells him sympathetically as he gathers up the potato peels to throw on the compost heap in their vegetable garden, “They’re not brutes – they’re capable of talking it out without throwing punches. And even if they did, they’re perfectly matched. They can’t actually hurt each other.”

“Your Steve is retired,” Bucky replies, a little defensive over his own Steve, “He’s probably out of practice. He’s gone soft.”

“I can assure you he hasn’t,” James tells him with a wink, delighting in Bucky’s blush and quiet squirming. Giving the soup one final stir, Bucky replaces the glass lid of the large soup pot, leaving it to its own devices. His eyes wander to the closed kitchen blinds as if he were able to see straight through them to what Steve and Rogers are up to on the porch. Why hadn’t HYDRA given him _that_ ability?

Because truthfully, he has no idea what is going on outside, and he has even less idea what is going on in Steve’s head. Steve had clearly been angry – furious, even – when he had seen Bucky all over his doppelganger, but why? Did he really think Rogers was taking advantage of him, and forcing himself upon Bucky? Was he angry at Bucky – or disgusted to learn that Bucky wanted him so badly he would take any version of him available?

“He was jealous,” James says suddenly, as if reading his thoughts, “I knew he would be. Steve – my Steve – would lose his shit if he saw someone else with their hands on me. Even if it were his own hands.”

“You planned this, didn’t you?” Bucky asks irately, as realisation dawns, “You told Rogers to kiss me, and you _knew_ Sam and Steve would finish their run just in time to walk in on us.”

After his years with HYDRA, there is nothing he hates more than being manipulated, and the helplessness he feels as a result of being a pawn in someone else’s plot. To have a version of himself – who knows, better than anyone ever could, what he has been through – treat him this way feels like the ultimate betrayal. Sensing his anger, James simply rolls his eyes and turns up the heat on the soup.

“He needed some sense slapping into him,” James tells him plainly, “You both do, but at least you can recognise how you feel. He needed an extra kick to figure it out. Like seeing what he was missing.”

“There’s nothing for him to figure out,” Bucky rages, sending the wooden soup spoon clattering to the floor as he throws his hands up in the air, “What part of this aren’t you getting? _He’s not your Steve_. We are from _a parallel universe_. He doesn’t want me.” 

James just looks at him, expressionless, as he bends to pick up the spoon and throw it in the sink.

“He _doesn’t_ ,” Bucky insists desperately, “He deserves – He wants someone sane, and whole. Who can sleep a whole night without waking up screaming. Who he can touch without having to think about all the monsters that have already put their hands on them. Someone whose hand he can hold without thinking about all the throats it’s crushed.”

“There it is,” James tells him in a tone that should be smug but is closer to pitying, “It’s not about him at all, is it? It’s about you.”

 _It’s about both of them._ Bucky doesn’t deserve Steve, and Steve deserves better than Bucky. James, out of everyone, should know that. He’s seen Bucky at his most monstrous – because James was that monster, too.

“I am you,” Bucky snaps, wondering if the doppleganger fight that doesn’t seem to be taking place outside will take place in the kitchen instead. He feels confident that Shuri’s arm is stronger than anything that Stark could make. 

“I know you are,” James snaps back, equally frustrated, “I know how hard it is to accept that you deserve to be treated kindly, and to have a home, and to not be punished. I know exactly how fucking hard it is to admit that you deserve _his_ kindness, and yeah, his love. But you _do_. We do.”

Bucky scoffs and shakes his head, folding his arms and turning away so he doesn’t have to see the earnest expression on his own face.

He’s practically vibrating with frustration – doesn’t James get it? He _doesn’t_ deserve Steve, but it doesn’t even _matter._ What Bucky deserves doesn’t matter. He could have lived the life of a saint and it wouldn’t change this simple fact:

Steve doesn’t want him.

“Erm,” Tony says awkwardly from where he is hovering in the doorway, “Sorry to interrupt this… whatever this is. But I’ve got something. I’ll go get the others.”

* * *

They gather in the living room, too many muscled bodies squeezing onto the sofas as Tony sets up a Stark tablet to project images above the coffee table. This time, Steve looks even more wounded than usual when Bucky choses the seat furthest from him. Clint and Sam look between the two Bucky’s and two Steve’s awkwardly, and Bucky is increasingly glad that Tony was holed up in the office for the entire affair that took place in the kitchen. God knows what he would have to say about it.

It’s a relief to see that neither Rogers nor Steve appeared to be bruised or battered, but somehow, the idea of them talking is much, much scarier than the idea of them fighting.

“Alright,” Tony tells them, clapping his hands together in a way that is painfully reminiscent of Bucky and Steve’s fourth grade math teacher, “Here’s what I’ve got.”

Rapidly flicking through data projections and thermal maps of the surrounding forest, Tony informs them that he has successfully integrated _their_ universe’s JARVIS, present in his Iron Man suit, with _this_ universe’s JARVIS, present in the cabins infrastructure, in a process so complicated and boring that Bucky almost checks out. But the desire to know how the hell (and _if_ the hell) he can get out of this nightmare keeps him present. He follows Tony enough to understand that he has spent the last few days cooped up in the office passing the readings his JARVIS had taken of the energy signals in the HYDRA base onto the cabin’s JARVIS. Together, the two parallel AI and Tony had managed to craft a rudimentary system to detect equivalent signals in the local area.

“None of whatever that energy was is still present in the forest, or on us. But JARVIS picked up the same signal not far from here,” Tony tells them animatedly, pulling up a map to hover above the coffee table in front of them, “There’s nothing on the surface, but there seems to be some kind of structure underground.”

The map morphs into a satellite image. It’s another stretch of forest, not unlike the one surrounding the cabin, except for subtle, unnatural undulations in the forest floor – so slight that you probably wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for it. The image is so generic it could be of any forest on the east coast, but a shock wave of familiarity runs through Bucky as soon as he lays eyes on it, turning to look at James sharply to see his reaction.

“A HYDRA base,” James confirms, nodding at the map projected from a Stark tablet before them, “I _knew_ there was one in New England, but the memory has so many holes - I thought maybe I had imagined it.”

Bucky nods too, a broken memory pulling at the edges of his consciousness. James is right – it’s vague, but it’s there. A tunnel, thick concrete walls, heavy steel doors... a Chair. The details escape him, but he knows, just as James does, that this base is real.

And they’ve been there before.

“If we can figure out how they made this technology - or better yet, lift the whole damn archway – I think I can send us home,” Tony tells them, so confidently that Bucky almost believes him, despite his lack of faith in Tony personally.

When Bucky looks over to his other self, James is already looking at him. He nods, just once, and Bucky knows they have both reached the same conclusion.

“We’ll go,” James says, “Me and Bucky. _Just_ me and Bucky.”

It makes sense – they’re silent and highly trained, able to enter and leave without detection, and deal with anyone who stands in their way. They _know_ this base, even if the memories are proving hard to completely unlock – but Bucky is confident that once he’s inside, he’ll know the layout like the back of his metal hand. But the look in James’ eyes tells him that his insistence that they go alone is more than just practicality. There’s a specific reason James needs to go back into that base.

“No way,” Steve replies instantly, not even considering the proposition, “It’s too dangerous.”

“He’s right,” Rogers agrees, speaking directly to a frowning James, “You’re not going in without backup. We have no idea what’s down there – I’m not sitting this one out and letting you walk in there alone.”

“I wouldn’t be alone. There’s two of me,” James points out argumentatively, gesturing to Bucky with his golden arm, “Besides, you’re retired.”

“I’m still young,” Rogers protests, “I can un-retire.”

“Young? You’re 101!”

“You’re 102!” Rogers snaps back and Clint’s head whips back and forth between them like he’s watching a ping pong match. Idly running his hand through Greta’s fur when she settles her head on his knee, Steve steps in before the old married couple can start bickering like… well, like an old married couple.

“We’re all going,” He says decisively, and Sam and Clint nod in agreement, “We need to have each other’s backs.”

“Where did our last mission go wrong, Steve?” Bucky snaps, suddenly annoyed at Steve taking charge as if he hasn’t been doing it for the last 90 years of their lives, “Tony arriving and triggering their defences, you and him having a row in the middle of the mission, Clint fucking with a random control panel – no offence, but if I had been there by myself, we never would have ended up here.”

“We have more experience of infiltration missions than the rest of you combined,” James adds passionately, and both Rogers and Steve wince at the reminder of Bucky’s decades with HYDRA, “We were carrying out missions like this, _alone,_ while you were a ice cube, Steve, and the rest of you weren't even _born_. We’re more than capable.”

“I know you’re capable-“ Rogers starts, but James doesn’t let him finish.

“Then we’ll go! The less bodies on the ground, the easier to move around undetected. It doesn’t need a small army. This is what we _do_ , Steve, let us -”

“Oh my god!” Clint cuts in, “Look, it’s late. We need more reconnaissance than just a picture of a forest and a guess that there’s something underneath it. We get the info, _then_ we decide who goes. Let’s call it a night, and you can bicker again in the morning, okay?”

That was… surprisingly sensible for Clint, actually. The others blink at him, surprised, as Bucky notes that it _is_ late – they’ve been here so long it’s almost pitch black outside.

“I can be professional,” Clint adds defensively, spoiling his own statement by taking a noisy slurp from a rainbow coloured slushy he picked up at the store with James that afternoon.

“For once, Clint’s right,” Sam agrees, ignoring Clint’s little “hey!” of protest, “We can decide on a team structure when we know what we’re up against. Bucky ‘s right that we destroy any chance of a stealthy approach if we all go barrelling in, but Steve’s right too – it’s not safe to send you two in without backup or a way out.”

James opens his mouth to protest once again, and abruptly closes it, nodding as if he’ll accept this. But his body language doesn’t change. Bucky recognises the tension in his own body – it’s the same way he would hold himself when he came across Steve, blooding and losing, trying to hold his own in street brawl in some Brooklyn back alley.

Somebody else may have started the fight, but James is going to finish it. He doesn’t give in this easily, and he isn’t going to let this go.

But bizarrely, he does. James nods, yawning dramatically as everyone else signals their own agreement and tiredness. He allows himself to be bundled off to bed by Rogers, and Bucky barely catches the look James flicks over his shoulder at him before the bedroom door closes between them.

Steve and Bucky dress for bed without speaking; the awkwardness of their disagreement, the incident with Rogers in the kitchen, and what they heard last night almost palpable in the silence. As they lay down together, Steve finally brings himself to look at Bucky, opening his mouth as if to start tackling to wall of issues that lies between them, closing themselves off from each other. But Bucky can’t allow it. Before Steve can speak, Bucky simply rolls onto his side, stubbornly facing the wall instead of his oldest friend, and asks JARVIS to turn out the lights.

* * *

Having the same brain has its perks.

When Bucky silently slips out of bed in the early hours of the morning, once he’s confident that Steve is out cold, James is already waiting for him in the kitchen, weapons laid out on the table for him to choose from like a deadly buffet. They suit up in silence, careful not to let so much as a stray bullet fall to the floor and make a sound. Greta sleeps soundly, not woken by their measured footsteps or calm preparations, and the rest of the house is still fast asleep.

“Steve doesn’t wake up until 7,” James tells him darkly, “And we’ll be long gone by then.”


	14. Road Trip

The cabin is deep in the heart of the woods, surrounded on all sides by trees, and only accessible on foot. But it turns out that the Barnes-Rogers’ do own a car – or several, along with a few bikes, stored in a small garage close to the main road, about a mile’s walk from their home. The car they choose for their mission is a sleek, almost silent jet black Stark model, and JARVIS greets them far too cheerfully as soon as the engine turns on.

“Good evening, Sergeant Barnes and Sergeant Barnes-Rogers. Do you have a destination in mind?”

James rattles off the coordinates to the HYDRA base, and lets JARVIS take the wheel, switching on the autopilot and leaning back in his seat. There’s no need to cover their tracks – if anyone wakes up to find them gone, it will be more than obvious where they have disappeared too. All they can do is hope that both Steves sleep soundly, and stay asleep until they return.

“You gonna tell me why you were so insistent we go alone, or what?” Bucky asks his other self as they cut through the winding roads of the forest, trusting their fate to JARVIS's driving, and James sighs in response, pensive expression illuminated in the neon lights of the dashboard buttons.

“What I said – it’s true,” James begins, not quite meeting his eye, “And you agreed - it’ll go smoother with the two of us. It’s safer, it’s quicker, this is what we do. I’m not gonna risk someone else getting hurt when we can do it ourselves with no casualties." 

“But that’s not all,” Bucky presses, “There’s something about this place – about this whole situation – that’s nagging at you. I know, because it’s getting to me too.”

James sighs again, fingers tapping nervously against the car door.

“I remember this place – but only parts. I recognised it as soon as Stark pulled that picture up,” He says, digging his nails into the leather panelling, “White walls, scalpels, doctors…”

“They experimented on us here,” Bucky agrees gravely, flashes of cold metal, restraints and knives hovering at the edges of his memories. He’d been subjected to hundreds of dehumanising and painful procedures during his time with HYDRA – enough to know that the only difference between experimentation and torture is that they wrote down how long he took to stop screaming in the former. But there’s something about this place, and whatever happened there, that makes his skin crawl whenever he tries to bypass the mental block of his shattered memories. He thinks it's not necessarily what they _did_ to him, so much as what they were _trying_ to do, that was so disturbing to him.

“That must have been – what, thirty years ago?” James questions, snapping Bucky out of his thoughts, “But I can’t help but feel like it’s something to do with what’s going on now.”

“How?” Bucky asks with a frown, and James bites his lip, a nervous habit that Bucky has never been able to shake either. Outside the car window, the tree trunks cut by beams of moonlight blur together into one, an impressionist painting that Steve could spend hours analysing.

“When that archway sent you all here, it didn’t take you to this universe's Clint or Tony or Sam or Steve, or just dump you in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t take you from one of those archways to another. It took _you_ directly to _me._ It dumped you 12 foot from yourself,” James tells him, looking at him beseechingly, “Do you think that’s a coincidence? If this is about me – _us -_ then I need to know what they want. I need to know what else is coming.”

The thought had crossed Bucky’s mind. He had only been marginally closer to the archway than Steve, and Clint is the one that actually activated it. So why did it send them to this other Bucky, specifically? Why dump them here instead of at the bottom of the ocean or the middle of an active volcano?

Why had HYDRA built a portal that linked directly to another version of their lost Asset?

“I can’t wait for recon and a plan and for the team to get their shit together. I can’t wait for them to come to us,” James continues, “And Steve – _my_ Steve… there are things that I try to shield him from. The worst of what they did to me. I’m sure you do to. And even though I don’t fully remember what happened here– the _emotion_ attached to this place tells me this is one of the bad ones. If we can do it ourselves – and we can – and he doesn’t need to see the tables and the restraints and the bloodstains… well, I’ll take that option every time.”

No wonder he and Steve get alone so well, Bucky thinks; they’re both self-sacrificing assholes ‘til the end.

Silence settles inside the car as they speed along, with miles still to go in their journey to the unknown. Bucky can't really argue with James' logic and reasoning, so he endeavours to change the subject in the interim.

“Your Steve – he’s retired,” he asks his parallel self as they drive, “But you still take missions from Fury?”

“He always wanted to fight, and I never did. But I don’t need to tell you that,” James tells him honestly, “I didn’t want to answer the draft, didn’t want to be a puppet for HYDRA. But now he’s done, and I feel like I’m just getting started. I want him to have this – peace, his art, me. But I can’t stop fighting – not when I know there are people out there who-“

He breaks off, but Bucky understands. He feels the same – while HYDRA still exists, no matter how fractured, he can’t simply hang up his knives and retire. And whatever it is HYDRA is doing here, so close to James and Rogers home, can’t continue.

Together, they’ll get the answers they need, then burn the place to the ground.

“Did you and your Steve talk?” James asks him after a few more beats of silence, “Before you went to bed? Seemed like you were both close to a breakthrough for a minute there.”

Bucky scoffs, shaking his head and turning to stare out the window to hide his expression from James.

“There’s nothing to say,” He answers despondently, “And we’ve been over this before. There’s not gonna be any kind of breakthrough. He’s hardly going to suddenly realise he’s been in love with me for the last 100 years.”

“My Steve did,” James reminds him patiently, and Bucky hates the way the reminder sends a spark of hope shooting down his spine, no matter how many times he convinces himself it’s hopeless, “The thing about our man is: he’s dense. Not dumb, you know he’s whip smart, but my god can he be dense. It’s all those punches to the head he took when he was little, I think.”

James eyes flick over to him, and he only sighs and continues when he finds Bucky resolutely not looking in his direction, and pretending he isn’t listening at all. He knows himself better than that.

“I had to take that first step, pal. That leap of faith,” James tells him passionately, reaching over the squeeze his flesh shoulder with a golden metal hand, “And then it all fell into place for him. He realised that the feeling he had had since we were kids – the one he had been told by everyone was fraternal love, friendship, brotherhood, and that anything else would be criminal and unnatural and wrong – wasn’t that at all. He could see it without all that baggage, for what it really was. Do you really believe he feels the same way about you as he does Sam? Natasha? Tony, before whatever went down between you? Jones, Dugan, hell, even Peggy? He didn’t jump out of a plane into enemy territory for her, kid. He didn’t betray his closest friends and become an international fugitive. He –“

“Stop,” Bucky gasps out, shaking with the need for it to be real, with the need for what his own voice is telling him to be true, “Stop, I just – I can’t think about this right now.”

He takes a deep breathe, shaking James’ concerned hand of his shoulder and attempting the quell the tremor in both his hands, the one he gets sometimes when he’s close enough to a panic attack that it's even evident in his metal hand. Beside him, his own big blue eyes are looking at him with growing concern and pity.

“Sorry, I’m – I need to be in the headspace for this mission. On my A game. We need to have each others backs, and – and we need to stop talking about this,” Bucky finishes lamely, wrapping his arms around himself defensively as he blinks back moisture. James takes the hint and promptly ceases that line of questioning, although it’s obvious he still has more he wants to say. Instead, he asks JARVIS to release the wheel so he can drive, to give him something to do with his hands instead of drawing his parallel self into a crushing hug.

In about an hour, they’ll be pulling over on the edge of another forest, pushing the car off the road into a hidden ditch. In an hour, they’ll be wracking their memories for the entrance of the secret tunnel they both know, deep down, is there. In an hour, they’ll glide through a familiar base, and destroy the men who made them, and discover the answers being kept from them.

In an hour, they might find a way to get home.

* * *

In the early hours of the morning, when the sun has risen enough to render the curtains useless, Steve blinks awake suddenly, not sure what has woken him. When he looks to his right, Rogers is standing in the open doorway, looking white as a sheet. When he looks to his left, the space in the sheets that Bucky should occupy is empty and cold, and Rogers speaks in a frightening, frantic voice;

“They’re gone. They’ve gone alone.”


	15. The Mission: Redux

Steve can’t be sure if it’s him or Rogers than is panicking more.

By the time Tony, Clint and Sam drag themselves out of bed and into the living room for a debrief, both Steves have worn tracks in the carpet through their nervous pacing, and even Greta is whining in distress, sensing their panic and fear in the air.

“Well, I’m not gonna say I’m surprised,” Clint says wearily with a yawn as he flops onto the couch, “They were bizarrely insistent on going by themselves, and you kind of shut them down.”

“For their own safety!” Rogers snaps, adding; “JARVIS, get me the coordinates of the HYDRA base.”

“JARVIS, don’t do that,” Tony cancels the instruction, and Steve and Rogers both turn their most dangerous glare on him, arms crossed in an identical defensive posture, “Let’s just talk about this for a minute. Rushing after them might make things worse.”

“How could things possibly be worse?” Steve snarls, panic burning hot in his veins and lashing out at Tony in response, “They’re alone, in a HYDRA base, completely out of contact, and with no one watching their backs... We need to go get them, _now._ ”

“Steve, they were the only ones that knew where the secret entrance was, and how to get in. They have the stealth skills to complete this mission. They said the base was familiar and they would be able to work their way around undetected,” Sam pleads with him, holding his hands up placatingly as he rises from the couch, “I understand, man, I do. I’m worried too. But if you go in guns blazing, you’re gonna blow the whole mission and put them in more danger than they’re in right now.”

“I hate to say it, but they’re right,” Clint adds, throwing his legs over the arm of the couch and leaning back to take over the spot Sam has just vacated, “We could be doing more harm than good if we try to help them now.”

As much as it pisses Steve off, his team are mostly correct. The last thing they want to do is put Bucky and James in more danger than they already are.

“They must have taken a car-“ Rogers realises suddenly, “JARVIS, do you have eyes on the car they took?”

“Yes Captain Rogers-Barnes,” JARVIS answers calmly from somewhere in the ceiling, “The vehicle is currently parked approximately a mile away from the coordinates Sir identified as the source of the energy signal. It has been 75 minutes since Sergeant Barnes and Sergeant Rogers-Barnes exited the vehicle.”

“Nearly an hour and a half, and they aren’t even back at the car yet?” Steve asks frantically, “That means something has gone wrong-“

“Or,” Sam counters calmly, taking a step towards him, “It means everything’s gone smoothly, and they’ll be back soon.”

He sighs, rubbing tiredly at his eyes as he places his other hand on Steve’s shoulder and looks between him and a distressed Rogers sympathetically.

“If JARVIS doesn’t hear from them soon, we’ll go after them. But for now – as much as you don’t like it – I think we just have to wait it out.”

* * *

The closer they get to the base, the more fragments of Bucky’s past begin to unlock. The memory associated with this place strengthens and grows, taking on a solid form as they pass silently through the trees, keeping to the shadows.

He was here for a long time, he thinks. Longer than they would normally keep him off the ice without a mission. And in that time – he remembers scalpels, needles, shackles and cold steel tables…

Sometimes, they would ship him to a new base while he was still in the cryo tube. Waking in a new city or country or decade was also disorientating, but no more so than not knowing your own name, and he quickly adapted. But here, that wasn’t possible – the entrance, he remembers, is a cloaked man hole cover, which opens up to reveal a long ladder into the unknown. Can’t drop a cryo tube down that. He had climbed down on his own two feet, still shaking from being thawed out, blinking into consciousness on unsteady legs like a new born deer. The need to obey the barked instructions that sent him plunging into the unknown of the underground base outweighed his confused - another involuntary function, like drawing breath or blinking.

As he and James heave the heavy manhole cover up, he knows the exact shade of the rusty steel ladder before he sees it. He remembers the descent into darkness before they make it, hundreds of feet of almost pitch blackness in a tight, claustrophobic space. He knows, before they reach the bottom, that the ladder with end in a large, dimly lit concrete room, with a strong steel vault door at one end, likely guarded by two HYDRA goons.

Above him, James is making his way down too, keeping the clink of his steel toe capped boots on the rungs of the ladder as quiet as possible. Letting out a quiet whistle that only an enhanced individual could hear, he indicates for James to stop, and does the same himself, just before the tunnel ends.

Hooking his legs over the last rung of the ladder before it opens up into the room below, he bends at the knee and leans back, until he is hanging upside down like a sleeping bat and only the top of his head is protruding from the ladder tunnel. Carefully, he draws his rifle, and picks off the two guards he successfully predicted would be guarding the vault door with expert ease. With an acrobatic flourish, he lets himself fall from the ladder into the wide room below, using the momentum of his body and the weight of his metal arm to flip himself at the last second and landing on his feet.

When James climbs down to meet him, he looks genuinely impressed.

“Not bad,” He whispers with a slightly feral grin, “Is it egotistical if I say that about myself?”

Bucky rolls his eyes, secretly a little pleased as he moves past James to approach the large steel vault door that takes up almost the entire wall at the end of the room. He's never really thought about his skills in a positive light before - he's always considered them a curse rather than a blessing; something forced upon him through painful experimentation and learnt through torture, then turned on innocents against his will. For once, it's nice to have his talents and abilities recognised as something impressive rather than monstrous - something he can use for good, here. Pressing his ear against the door and straining his sensitive hearing, he hears nothing, and motions for James to move ahead. His parallel self takes a small blacklight torch from one of the pockets of his mission jacket, and hovers over the keypad beside the door, pressing the numbers that show traces of sweat from frequent use.

The doors slide open without resistance, and they’re met with an empty corridor on the other side. To their relief, no alarms appear to have been triggered, and no one rushes out to greet them. But the relief is short lived, and paranoia follows swiftly in its wake.

“Too easy,” Bucky mutters as he stares down the long, empty corridor, devoid of all life.

“Don’t panic. SHIELD’s been running a pretty thorough campaign to wipe up the dregs of HYDRA,” James tells him, though he doesn’t sound too confident, “And I’ve been pretty thorough myself. This base will be running with a skeleton crew.”

They just have to trust that that’s true – if it’s a trap, they’re in it now, and there’s no way to go but forward if they want to get the answers they need.

James leads, gun raised high while Bucky takes a lower position behind him. Together, they move seamlessly as one person, taking turns to sweep each room that branches off the corridor.

The deeper they get into the base, the more wrong it feels. The rooms are empty – dozens of them. While some have clearly been unused for years, expired food products left on the counter and dust covering the surfaces, others show more recent signs of life.

But nobody’s here now. The entire base is silent, the hum of electricity of the lights the only sound.

While the silence is eerie, at least it means they haven’t been detected yet – no alarms are blaring and no guards are rushing to meet them. In an above-ground base, Bucky would be able to take out external guards, reroute CCTV systems and disable alarms. But the entirety of this base is deep underground, and the security room is in the very of the compound. Here, they’re relying entirely on their own stealth, the dysfunction of the security system in such an old, run down base, and the laziness of the guards who are meant to be keeping watch over the CCTV.

It’s a massive risk, but they don’t have a choice.

Halfway down the corridor, James stops suddenly, and Bucky naturally stops with him, straining his hearing when James holds up a hand indicating for him to listen.

Finally, they detect a sign of life. A few rooms ahead of them, they can just make out the sounds of footsteps – heavy, likely combat boots – and the metallic sounds of weapons being drawn. Straining his hearing, Bucky identifies the noises as coming from two rooms, each of which branch off of the corridor just a few hundred yards ahead of them.

An ambush, then. It seems their entry hadn’t gone unnoticed after all. But if this pathetic attempt at a trap is the best defence this base has to offer, stealth doesn’t even matter at this point.

Even with their experience and enhanced hearing, it’s hard to identify exactly how many guards they’re dealing with. They hear the tell-tale scraping of body armour against concrete as their would-be assailants press themselves tightly against the wall just behind the door in each room, hiding themselves from view to get the jump on the two super soldiers.

If they were dealing with anyone else, it might have even worked. But for James and Bucky, this attempt at an ambush is almost insulting. Sharing a look, the two assassins come to a silent decision: keep moving, let the guards think they have fallen into their trap – and meet them with more force than they can handle.

They move forward cautiously, guns raised and each of their bodies titled to the side to cover the branching rooms that the HYDRA guards will burst out of any second now.

“I want them alive,” Bucky hears a rasping voice say from inside the room to their right, before the attack begins.

A grenade rattles along the ground towards them, but is swiftly dispatched by James, who kicks it right back into the room to their left with no hesitation. The resulting explosion forces their assailants in that room to spill out of their cover before they’re ready, tripping over themselves to escape the flames.

The loud flash and bang barely faze Bucky, and he concentrates on picking off each of the ambushers coming from the room to their right with a clean headshot. Beside him, James abandons his rifle, the closeness of his attackers forcing him into a melee. Pulling a knife from his thigh holster, he drives in blade first as Bucky keeps his distance, taking out anyone who gets too close to his parallel self and deflecting bullets away from his own body with his metal arm. When the numbers of their attackers have dwindled to more manageable numbers, Bucky throws himself into the fray, drawing his own knife and thinning the herd as James throws one assailant so hard he flies through the drywall, taking out another soldier on his way down.

Once the last body falls, the two assassins stand back to back in the middle of the hallway, guns raised and poised for a second wave of attack.

But it never comes.

It looks as though James was right. The base was down to a skeleton crew – and though they fought valiantly to defend it, they were hardly a match for the two most experienced assassins in the world. It’s almost sad – the last dregs of HYDRA, trying to cling to the vestiges of their glory in a derelict, decrepit old base.

Or at least, it would be sad, if seeing their downfall didn’t make Bucky so fucking happy.

“Well, that’s a shame,” A voice rasps from inside the room to their right, and both assassin’s heads whip round to track where it came from.

Now they have a clear line of sight into the room, they can see that it’s a lab – a painfully familiar one. But the shackles and cold steel table that stand in the centre of the room in Bucky’s memory are no longer there. Instead, a large, coiled metal archway dominates the laboratory – an identical archway to the one that sent them to this universe in the first place. But other than that, the room is devoid of life and the source of the voice is nowhere to be found.

Cautiously, Bucky takes a slow step into the room, James close as his heels. Neither lower their guns – or their guards – as they move further inside, keeping their distance from the temperamental archway.

Suddenly, there is movement from the other side of the room, just beyond the arch. Lights flicker on behind what had initially appeared to be a mirror, chipped by the spray of bullets during their brief fire fight, illuminating the frame and revealing it to be not a mirror – but a window. Bucky can see that behind the thick glass is a row of seats comprising an observation chamber; where his handlers would sit if they wished to observe the ‘experiments’ conducted on the Asset for their own sick pleasure.

The thick doors behind them that lead to the corridor - and the outside world - slide closed before the two assassins can react, and the two figures in white coats standing in the observation chamber eye them like prey.

“So nice of you to join us, Asset,” One of the men rasps, grinning predatorily. The man beside him smirks an identical grin, and James and Bucky look between them in confusion, desperately trying to parse what they’re seeing. When the other man speaks, his voice is identical to his associates, too.

“We’ve been waiting for you both.”


	16. Answers

“I’m sorry we couldn’t give you a grander welcome, Asset. But there are so few of us left, now,” One of the scientists tells them dryly. Now their eyes have adjusted to the light, both super soldiers can confirm their first suspicions – these two men are identical. They’re both tall and pale, a little on the wrong side of 60 with a mess of white hair, thick glasses and identical calculating grey eyes. Considering where the four of them are standing, it’s unlikely that they are merely twins.

Two parallel versions of the same ex-HYDRA assassin stare down two parallel versions of the same HYDRA scientists on the other side of the glass.

“That’s alright,” James responds lightly, squinting down the barrel of his rifle as he draws a bead on the leftmost scientist, right between his eyes, “We’re not really into parties and crowds these days.” 

Unsurprisingly, the two bullets James lets loose into the glass only leave slight chips, and the scientists barely flinch at the gunshots. James simply shrugs in a universal gesture for ‘ _it was worth a try_ ’, and shoulders his rifle, sensing the futility of letting loose another volley of bullets into such thick glass. Besides, it doesn’t seem as though there is anyone left alive in the base, with the entire skeleton crew save for these scientists lying dead in the corridor outside – and someone needs to stay alive to give them answers.

“Ah! The difference between the arm of your Asset and mine – fascinating,” The other scientist points out to the first with childlike delight, leaning forward towards the glass to get a better look, “The first thing we’ll do when you’re both back under our control is find out which is stronger – Stark or Wakandan technology?”

Flexing the plates in his arm menacingly, Bucky decides that he is over small talk. He wants to know why they’ve been pulled into this hellish universe, and why they’re standing in a room they were tortured in 30 years ago – and he wants to know now.

“What the fuck is happening here?” He cuts in impatiently, not in the mood for threats or supervillain monologues. James bits down on his lip to prevent a laugh escaping as both scientists look offended at his blunt tone.

“Now, now, Asset,” One of the men chastises, and the name still sends a shiver down Bucky’s spine to hear, even now he has reclaimed his own, “You were always so patient and obedient – what has happened? I suppose it doesn’t matter. We’ll reclaim you soon enough.”

Ignoring the threat, James presses in on the implication;

“We’ve met before?”

The man is vaguely familiar, in the same way that every doctor or scientist in a lab coat is. They all ignite the same spark of fear within him, these days. But this man in particular is no more familiar than that. Neither assassin can recall a name, or having seen him before. But clearly, they have – the offense in each man’s expression at their lack of recognition is enough to tell them that.

“In this very base, Asset. We chose it for a reason,” One says irately, a deep frown settling on his face, “I understand your memories have returned to you. Weeks, we spent in this very room – extracting DNA, conducting our work, making you stronger. You surely must remember this.”

The torture conducted upon them in the name of experimentation is gaining clarity with every second they spend here. But these men – or rather, this man - he means nothing to Bucky. From the look on his face, James doesn’t recognise him either.

It’s funny, really. Every person that committed atrocities against him under HYDRA’s orders thinks themselves the king of his world. Each believes that he must be kept up at night, haunted by their faces, flinching at the sounds of their names. Each scientist or technician thinks themselves his creator, a god to him.

But Bucky has lived for so long, and seen so much evil, that each of the power-hungry children fighting their way up the ranks of HYDRA blend into one faceless, nameless evil. He knows how each of their attempts at amassing power will end; when he is defrosted, they will be gone, dead or defected or arrested, and an identical guard will be in their place. Handlers, scientists, guards and STRIKE teams will change, and only the Asset will remain. They are interchangeable, and identical in their cruelty.

None even realise that to HYDRA, everyone except the Asset is a disposable body, and to Bucky, they are even less than that. None of them are special.

HYDRA is a constant threat and the fuel of his nightmares, but each of its components is an expendable soldier, blindly carrying out orders. Their actions may haunt him, but their names and faces don’t deserve space amongst the precious memories he has regained for himself after years of struggle.

“Nah,” James says dismissively, and the rage that colours the men’s features ignites a small spark of delight in Bucky.

“Insolent,” The other man snaps, “Where did the manners HYDRA taught you go to, Soldat?”

“Just tell us why you pulled my team into this universe,” Bucky sighs, not willing to play any more games. The scientists look vaguely happy to be allowed a moment to let loose a supervillain monologue, and unsurprisingly, begin a convoluted explanation.

“You must remember some of what happened in this base, yes? Or you never would have found the entrance,” One of the scientists begins, not waiting for a response from the assassins before ploughing ahead, “You may remember the experiments we conducted within these walls - DNA extractions, largely, for the purposes of replication. A painful process, but one than would have profound consequences for our organisation were it successful.”

Something begins to click in the back of Bucky’s brain as he listens – a long supressed memory, falling into place as the other scientist speaks in that same rasping voice.

“We had attempted to replicate the serum before, of course. Our previous experiment resulted in… strong, but unstable candidates. I hear you and your Captain paid them a visit in Siberia recently. A shame they were lost – but they were of little use.”

 _Candidates._ Karpov had always referred to those crazed, bloodthirsty killers who had volunteered for the replica serum as his _siblings_. But they were nothing like him. His own serum was a knock off of the one Steve had received, but they are evenly matched – while Steve may be a little stronger, Bucky heals faster, and both can hold their own against each other easily. His _siblings_ were different. The serum they had received was a knock off of a knock off, and it was nowhere near the quality of his and Steve’s own. Their bodies had been strengthened – possibly even more than his own – but while the healing factor of his serum ensured his mind could be repaired and remain functional even after being wiped, their own minds were broken beyond repair. Insane and uncontrollable, they had been ‘decommissioned’; frozen and put in storage, until Zemo had done the world a favour and terminated them once and for all.

“But if we couldn’t replicate the serum,” One of the scientists is saying, as the pieces of his past begin to fall into place, “Why not replicate the soldier instead?”

“You were trying to clone me,” Bucky realises with a start, looking over to James and seeing his confusion reflected back at him in identical eyes. He remembers, now, whispers of the purpose of those weeks of experiments – to create something. To create _him_.

He remembers, too, the frustrations of the scientists and the anger of his handlers after every attempt was deemed a failure.

“None of them survived long – deformed, half-human things. The stuff of nightmares really – they struggled to even draw breathe for the few seconds they were alive, let alone draw a gun. They were of no use to us. Naturally, they were put down,” the scientist tells them, looking almost upset by the memory – but Bucky knows that it’s their own failure, not the suffering they caused, that’s upsetting both men.

“And the experiments were abandoned,” The other scientist finished, “You were sent back to the Soviets, the failed experiments were destroyed, and your extracted DNA was put on ice. I – _we_ – were demoted, despite our years of service to HYDRA, after dedicating our lives to the cause.”

“And now there is no HYDRA,” James tells them smugly, hands tightening on his rifle as he loses patience with this drawn-out explanation.

“But what are we, Asset?” The scientist smirks, “Our leaders may have fallen, but we remain. And while they did not appreciate our work then, now there is no one to answer to. We will rebuild HYDRA, with ourselves at the helm. And you will help us, yes?”

“Not fucking likely,” Bucky snarls, raising his rifle and drawing a bead on the weakest point of the glass, where James’ bullets had already chipped away at it. James holds up a hand indicating for him to hold his fire, and he’s right. It feels like the men have been rambling for hours, but what answers have they actually gotten so far?

“The technology you see before you,” The other scientist says, gesturing to the archway which blessedly doesn’t seem to be active, “Was developed in Sokovia, through the hands of the Maximoff girl. She has immense power, for such a young girl – and even she doesn’t know how to fully harness her potential. Her ability to create and move between dimensions – and universes – is one we have put to good use. It’s such a shame she was lost to HYDRA – perhaps we will send you to reclaim her, once you are ours once again.”

“The device, developed with her power, was never put to good use in Sokovia – and it was badly damaged during the mess your so-called _Avengers_ made of the country. But I salvaged it, and bought it here – one of the last strongholds of HYDRA. Where your DNA happens to be stored in large quantities.”

“For a long time, I searched, until finally, I made a connection. A universe where another version of myself had had the same idea – had retrieved the archway just as I had. Your universe, connected with mine,” The first scientist adds, “Once the connection was made, we could pass things between worlds – imagine the importance of such a discovery! First an apple, then a bird, then a few test bodies. There were some… casualties, but when everything was in order – why, I could go through myself. Back and forth, whenever I please.”

“Do you understand, Asset?” The other man asks with a patronising smile, mirrored creepily on the first scientist’s face, “We’ve read your files. Breaking you took a long time. Training you, moulding you into our perfect killer – that took even longer. Why do all the work again with somebody new when we could simply take a readymade version from another universe – or better yet, 1000 readymade versions? There are, after all, theorised infinite alternative universes…”

“You pulled us through on purpose,” Bucky realises, “That whole mission – it was a set-up, for this.”

“Your DNA, extracted all those years ago, allowed us to search for you across multiple universe - starting with my own. And as we watched you, we found exactly what we expected - you were still a puppet for SHIELD, doing Fury’s dirty work. We knew he would send you to investigate eventually, if we allowed the energy signals to be detected. All you had to do was get close enough to the machine for it to recognise your DNA, and you would be pulled into our trap like the prey animal you are. You were meant to be brought _here,_ but a mistake was made in the configuration,” The first scientist tells them, shooting an angry look towards his associate, who looks sheepish, “You were sent to the next strongest source of your DNA instead – yourself. ”

“The trap was sprung for you alone,” The other man rasps, “But the machine failed to distinguish between you and the other life forms in the room with you. We have no need for the others - perhaps we'll send you to terminate them. Though the Captain could make a powerful Asset, with the right training.”

“Soon, we will have an army of Assets at our disposal, pulled from their own universes into ours, and we will rebuild HYDRA," The first man finishes with a wicked grin, "You are only the beginning.”

Bucky’s knuckles tighten around the metal of his gun, practically growling at the thought of Steve falling into HYDRA hands. Beside him, James frowns, clearly still missing something.

“Why not come for me?” He asks plainly, “Why pull through other versions of me when there was a version of me right here, the whole time?”

The scientists merely laugh, the sound and the tilt of their heads synchronising in a disturbing display.

“Oh, we would have come for you eventually. But the longer you get to play house with Captain America, the sweeter it will be when we have you kill him. We’re generous men, Asset – we wanted to give you a few more months in the honeymoon phase. Unfortunately, you’ve just pushed up our timeline.”

Incensed by the threat to his husband, James’ raises his rifle, and lets forth a rapid stream of bullets, emptying his clip into the chips he has already made. The glass shudders and cracks slightly, and the two scientists step back in shock.

There is a moment of silence where all four men hold their breath – but the glass holds firm.

“Look,” Bucky begins with a sigh, attempting to reason with them, “All of your guards are dead. There’s no one else here to protect you. There’s a thin sheet of glass between you and us – how many more bullets is it going to take for us to get through there? How do you think this is going to end?”

It’s a genuine question – he just can’t see what the play is here. Two highly trained super soldiers against two seemingly unarmed, physically weak scientists? His enhanced hearing can’t detect any movement from the rest of the base – it really seems as though the weak ambush they faced earlier was the best defence attempt this compound had to offer. How do these seemingly intelligent men believe they’re going to get out of this alive – let alone reclaim their _Assets_?

“Asset – do you forget so quickly?” One of the men says, pulling a painfully familiar red book from the pocket of his lab coat, “We don’t need guards. Just a few words.”

“Longing.” He begins, in halting Russian, and Bucky snorts. _This_ is all they have? The words that Shuri removed from his head over a year ago?

They have no power over him anymore.

“Rusted.” The man continues, oblivious to Bucky’s disinterest.

But beside him, James has lowered his rifle – and he looks…

Well, he looks terrified.

“Seventeen.”

“No!” James gasps, dropping his rifle entirely and jamming his hands over his ears. But the volume on the intercom the scientists have been speaking over from the observation chamber only increases, until their enhanced hearing is nearly overwhelmed – and there is no way James can block this out.

“Daybreak.”

“Hey – it’s okay,” Bucky says gently, holding his hands out to comfort an increasingly distressed James, “Shuri got them all out, remember? They can’t force us to do _anything._ Not anymore. We’re in control.”

“What?” James cries in anguish, fingers clawing into the side of his head like that could stop him hearing this, “She never- I never-“

“Furnace.”

Oh, _fuck._

In this universe, Tony forgave Steve and Bucky. He worked _with_ them in Siberia, not against them. He helped secure them amnesty in the United States so they didn’t have to go on the run. They never went to Wakanda.

_They never went to Wakanda._

“Nine.”

Shuri never got the words out of James’ head. They’re still there.

“Benign.”

“Kill me,” Bucky hears his own voice plead from James’ mouth, hands tugging at his hair and desperation clouding his eyes.

“Homecoming.”

“Shoot me,” James gasps with the last shred of his autonomy, “Please, I can’t go back – I can’t hurt people. S-steve, I can’t hurt Steve–“

Bucky’s thumb flicks off the safety of his gun.

If it were him, he would ask the same thing. He would mean it, too. To become a slave again – to be used to hurt people, to hurt _Steve._ He would rather die.

“One.”

He knows exactly what he has to do. Raising the gun, he lines up the shot, and whispers;

“Sputnik.”


	17. Departure

The trajectory of Bucky’s bullet would have passed directly between James’ eyes, had he stayed standing for a second longer.

But James falls to the ground limply as soon as the shut-down word penetrates his brain, and Bucky’s bullet cuts cleanly through the chip in the glass directly in front of where James was standing.

This time, it’s enough. It shatters the glass, fragments falling like rain as the bullet cuts through the window like paper.

It hits the rightmost scientist, the bastard who had started all this, right between the eyes.

The other scientist's cheek is splattered with blood as his counterpart hits the floor. The confusion on his face is palpable – he clearly has no idea why the words have affected one soldier, but not the other. Like so many people before him, he has underestimated Princess Shuri – and he will pay the price for it.

The remaining scientist makes a pathetic attempt to run, so pathetic that it almost makes Bucky laugh. He dives through the shattered remains of the window into the observation chamber and grabs the man by the scruff of the neck as he makes a desperate grab for the door. The snap of his neck is clean, and far more humane than he truly deserves.

It’s almost anticlimactic, in the end.

Turning back into the lab, Bucky surveys the scene that he is left with – piles of dead HYDRA officers in the doorway and spilling into the corridor, two dead scientists in the observation room, a small fire still burning in the room a grenade went off in, and his parallel self, limp on the ground.

James isn’t dead, thankfully – just unconscious. The shut-down word, _Sputnik_ , was a last resort for his handlers. When he was being ‘erratic’ and not following orders, or posed a danger to the HYDRA top brass, the word would be employed – and would instantly shut down all of his bodily functions except breathing and his heartbeat, which sent him plunging into sleep. It was also one of the last words Shuri removed from him – and like the rest, it was never removed from James' mind.

Bucky makes a mental note to put James on a plane to Wakanda as soon as they’re out of this mess. He’s far too vulnerable this way.

Straining his enhanced hearing, he detects nothing. It seems those men really were the last of the skeleton crew that was holding this place together. Now, there’s no one. Another HYDRA cell wiped off the map.

Bucky briefly checks James’ pulse and breathing, but both are stable, so he turns his attention to the archway before them instead.

It’s the same set up as the lab they visiting in their own universe – the one that sent them here. An archway in the centre of the room, with a control panel set a few meters back from it. Remembering Clint’s mistakes, he doesn’t touch a thing. The last thing they need right now is to be sent to a third universe, when they’ve barely figured out what’s going on in this one.

This archway isn’t sizzling and glowing with the energy of the last one – it seems, for now, to be switched off, but he’s still hesitant to touch it. It’s too big and unwieldy for him to rip the entire thing up and carry it off with him, anyway – especially if he’s going to have to carry James out of here, too. Instead, he decides to leave it. They’ve cleared the base of HYDRA guards, and psycho scientists; let Stark deal with the tech.

With a sigh, Bucky begins the arduous task of getting the fuck out of here. He picks up James, as gently as possible, in a fireman’s carry. The Stark arm is not only uglier than his own, but heavier, and he’s feeling it by the time he reaches the end of the corridor with James slung across his shoulders.

A vague memory of a secret elevator in the back of the compound sparks hope within him, though. If he’s imagining it, he has no fucking idea how he’s going to get a 300 pound ragdolled super soldier up a claustrophobic ladder alone.

To his great relief, the elevator exists. It’s a graceless service elevator for shipments of chemicals and weaponry, but there is just enough space for himself and James’ limp body, so it’ll do. The lift shudders slowly to the surface, so slowly he almost doubts whether they are really moving, until it arrives. As soon as he and James have departed the elevator, it begins its descent, and the ground slides back to cover the hole it left, until it looks as though it were never even there.

Bucky had hoped that the cold autumn air would begin to wake his parallel self, but James shows no signs of awakening, even in the chilly breeze the morning has brought. While it had still been twilight when they had entered the base, it’s now almost entirely light – and Steve _must_ have noticed his absence by now.

It’s a short trek back to the entrance they came in through, and Bucky makes sure to deposit James in the soft leaves for a minute while he makes sure it’s secure. Using his metal arm, he leans into the tunnel and bends the top rungs of the ladder backwards until they form a metal grid, blocking off the entrance entirely. The Iron Man suit will be able to melt through the steel, but no one else will be getting in there in the meantime. Replacing the manhole cover and the leaves and grass that cloak it from view, he slings James back over his shoulder and slowly continues making his way towards the car.

By the time he reaches it, he’s exhausted. Days of little to no sleep, nightmares, and a firefight are catching up with him – not to mention lugging his own fat ass across the forest. It’s a relief to be able to deposit James’ body gently into the back seat of the car, and to sink his own into the driver’s seat, although he has no intention of driving in his condition.

“JARVIS,” Bucky commands sleepily, resting his eyes slightly as he leans his head back against the leather seats, “Take us home.”

* * *

It’s been twenty minutes since JARVIS told them he hadn’t heard from Bucky and James for well over an hour. Almost two hours total since Bucky and James slipped out of bed and fled in the night, determined to complete this mission themselves.

The _why_ of it all still escapes Steve. Why wouldn’t they let him and Rogers and the others come with them? Why did they disappear in the night instead of waiting until the morning and talking it through? Why didn’t Steve try to talk to Bucky before they went to bed – when he has so fucking much he needs to say to him?

Steve is on the very edge of breaking into the garage and going after Bucky himself when JARVIS finally, _finally_ speaks up.

“Captain Rogers and Captain Rogers-Barnes,” JARVIS announces cheerfully, and Steve freezes, “You may be pleased to know that Sergeant Barnes and Sergeant Rogers-Barnes have returned to their vehicle, and are on their way back to the property as we speak.”

Steve sags into the nearest chair, and the others look similarly relieved, pausing their examination of the satellite images of the base that are being projected from a Stark tablet on the living room table, now it seems their intervention will no longer be necessary.

“Are they okay?” Rogers asks worriedly, his shoulders visibly dropping with relief as he briefly pauses the pacing he has kept up since they awoke alone.

“Both Sergeants show normal vital signs,” JARVIS says evasively, and while it’s not a sufficient answer, it’s good enough for Steve right now. They’re alive.

Bucky’s alive, and coming home to him.

The wait for them to drive back to the cabin is nothing short of agonising, and only the knowledge that Bucky is fine stops him rushing out to the road to meet them. No doubt Bucky would see this as yet another sign of Steve’s lack of faith in his abilities, and he doesn’t want to do anything to piss his friend of right now. Not when he has so much to say to him.

He should have heard Bucky and James out when they insisted they could do this mission themselves. He should have offered to provide backup from outside the compound, and a watchful eye over comms, instead of pigheadedly insisting he lead the mission as if Bucky and James weren’t highly trained and highly competent agents. Most of all, he should have spoken to Bucky last night, instead of losing his nerve as soon as Bucky turned his back and pretended to fall asleep.

For the last few hours, he’s felt like an army wife during the war; waiting by the window for any sign of her husband’s return, or for a solemn soldier to arrive at her door with his hat removed in a mark of respect and a letter clutched in his palm. He feels helpless and useless, something he has rarely felt since being given a body that could match his desire to change the world.

It’s the same feeling he had when he had learnt that Bucky’s regiment had been decimated at Azzano, and when he was forced to watch Bucky plummet from a train, and when he called Bucky’s name on the highway and was met with a vacant stare, void of recognition.

It’s always Bucky, and not being able to help him, that makes him feel this way.

Without any way of knowing if Bucky and James are okay, and without any way to really help them without making things worse, there had only been one thing Steve could do in the hours they spent waiting for some sign from JARVIS.

Think, think and think some more.

The conversation he had had with Rogers outside seemed to have ignited a realisation in him that had him re-examining every interaction he had had with his best friend over the last 100 years.

When he had curled up next to Bucky under the same blanket on cold winter nights in Brooklyn, tucking his head beneath Bucky’s chin and pressing his ear to his chest to hear his friend’s steady heartbeat - had that been something that brothers do? When he had completed yet another sketch book with outlines of Bucky’s hands, lips, and eyes, his head turned in profile or his body stretched out on their ragged couch in repose – had that been a completely objective, platonic appreciation of his handsome features? When he had glared and snapped at whichever girl Bucky had taken on their double dates as she giggled and blushed in the face of his friend’s charm – had that been his jealousy at Bucky always getting the girls, or at the girls always getting Bucky?

And Bucky – the man who was always willing to throw himself into a fight to get Steve to safety, who held him through coughs and snot and vomit, night sweats and chills and fevers, who spent all of his spare income on medicine for Steve and paid far, far more than his fair share of rent with money he worked himself half to death to get. Who was willing to follow him into the jaws of death, not because he was Captain America, but because he was _Steve._ Who was able to come back to himself and fight off his demons after having his entire identity, humanity and soul ripped away from him for 70 years, all because he heard Steve say his name. What was that complete and unequivocal dedication, if not love?

How could Steve have dismissed 100 years of evidence of their love for each other as mere _friendship_?

He should have turned to Bucky as soon as they were alone last night, and told him everything – all the conclusions he had come to and all the things he needed to say. He should have told him that he thinks – _no,_ he knows -

Steve is in love with Bucky Barnes. 

But he didn’t. He was too much of a coward to confront him, once again. And when he awoke to find the bed they were supposed to share cold and empty, he feared that it may be too late to ever tell him how he felt.

But now he knows: Bucky’s alive. And he’s coming home.


	18. Return

The waiting is somehow worse now than it was when they didn’t know if Bucky and James were alive or dead. Rogers stands in the open front doorway with his arms folded tight across his chest as if he could summon the two assassins with his mind, while Steve remains glued to the bay window, curled up on the window seat and taking a vigilant survey of the perimeter.

After what feels like forever, a familiar figure breaks though the treeline, and relief floods through him. But it’s stamped out as soon as the feeling begins, when he realises that there is only one figure returning to them. Or at least, one figure who is alive and moving under their own power.

While one assassin is struggling through the trees and into the clearing, the other assassin is limp and unresponsive in his arms.

“No,” Steve breathes involuntarily, heart seizing painfully in his chest as he sees Rogers freeze in shock in the doorway.

One of them is – _god_ , he looks dead. One of them could be dead. JARVIS has said they were okay but - what if something had happened between then and now? What if he was wrong? Steve feels dizzy as he throws himself unsteadily to his feet, staggering towards the door where Rogers still stands frozen, his whole body trembling with fear.

Through the shadows of the tall pines, it is difficult to tell who is who – both assassins are wearing dark leather uniforms, and both have tied their long brunette hair up for the mission. But then, from where one Bucky is cradled to the other’s chest, an arm falls limply out of his grasp to hang loosely in the air, bouncing with each step the other assassin takes – and in the light of the rising sun, the arm flashes gold.

Steve knows, when Rogers lets out a pained moan like a dying animal and sways on his feet, that he has seen it too.

Rogers takes off running at his full super soldier speed, vaulting down the steps of the porch and across the clearing to reach his husband, and Steve follows close at his heels, feeling sick with relief and then ashamed for feeling that way when James could be _dead._

The closer they get, the more evil he feels – while he’s devastated that any version of Bucky is hurt, he’s so grateful that _his_ Bucky appears to be fine that he could cry.

In seconds, the two Steves reach the two Buckys, and Rogers lets out a heart wrenching sob as soon as he gets a closer look at his husbands ashen, unresponsive face and parted lips. His knees buckle and he falls to the ground in front of Bucky, reaching his hands up desperately with tears streaming down his face until Bucky gently deposits James in his arms.

“He’s alive!” Bucky is telling him frantically, but it is as though Rogers can’t hear him, unable to focus on anything other than James. His hands are shaking violently as he brushes hair away from his husbands face, and his fingers fumble at the base of his husband’s neck.

Rogers lets out another sob, this time of relief, when his fingers find a pulse, and he curls around James protectively, tucking James head under his chin and wrapping his strong arms around the unconscious man.

Over the two men’s heads, Steve tries to catch Bucky’s tired gaze, and the relief that he feels when clear blue eyes gaze back at him is indescribable.

“I thought-“ He begins, but chokes almost immediately, swallowing down a sob and unable to say aloud the scenario his brain had convinced himself of. Unable to even consider a world without Bucky in it.

“I’m okay,” Bucky whispers to him with a shaky smile, before he bends down hesitantly to address a near hysterical Rogers.

“Steve? Steve, look at me please,” He starts in the same voice he would talk to his baby sisters in, and Rogers manages to briefly draw his gaze away from James slacken face to comply, “He’s okay, Stevie, he’s just asleep. I had to use one of the words on him – one that knocks him out for a few hours – to stop him being triggered. But I promise you, he’s fine, and he’ll wake up soon, okay?”

Rogers nods, but neither of them are sure if he has truly taken in what Bucky is trying to tell him, still in a state of shock.

“Why don’t we take him inside?” Steve suggests gently, putting his hands softly on Rogers shoulders and squeezing when he doesn’t respond.

Rogers refuses to relinquish his hold on James for even a second, and seems reluctant to let anyone else touch him, so all Steve and Bucky can do is pull him onto unsteady feet and help him towards the house. James shows no sign of stirring even as they make their way back towards their worried teammates and Greta, who is pacing at the foot of the porch steps and whining as if sensing her dads’ distress.

“Is he-“ Sam asks nervously, and Bucky shoots him an unsteady smile, shaking his head.

“Just knocked out. He’ll be okay.”

They watch in dismay as a still shaking Rogers makes a beeline directly for their bedroom, holding his husband with ease as though he weighed no more than a child.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky tells Steve sheepishly as they watch him go, “I didn’t mean to do that to him – and you. I should have called ahead. I didn’t think about how it would look.”

“I’m just glad you’re safe,” Steve replies honestly, and he winces slightly as the door Rogers has pulled shut between them does nothing to muffle the sobs of fear and relief that flow freely now he is alone with his husband's unconscious form.

“Are you sure he’s okay?” Clint asks nervously, and Steve isn’t sure whether he’s referring to James or Rogers.

“He’s okay. But in this universe – I never stayed in Wakanda. The trigger words never got removed,” Bucky explains, and Steve sucks in a breathe, suddenly realising what had happened – what Bucky had been forced to do, “A HYDRA scientist had the words, and was going to trigger him – I had to get there first.”

“That must have been difficult,” Sam asks him gently, “Knowing what it feels like to have control taken from you like that, and doing it to him.”

“Yeah, well,” Bucky laughs a little hysterically, “They didn’t exactly leave me much of a choice.”

Haltingly, he talks the others through what they had found in the HYDRA base – and what they had been faced with. Tony looks sickly fascinated at the thought of cloning experiments, while Steve just feels sick at the knowledge of what Bucky went through and the fate of HYDRA’s ‘failed attempts’. He does, however, find some joy in the knowledge that the guards and scientists who populated the small base are now dead, at Bucky and James’ hand.

“Joining dimensions using the source of Wanda’s powers, and using your own extracted DNA as a focal point to pull you through to this universe once you were in range of the teleporter,” Tony muses when Bucky is done, “That’s genuinely impressive for HYDRA scientists.” 

“Well, if you’d like to pick his brains, it sounds like they’re all over the wall of the compound,” Clint responds dryly, and Sam wrinkles his nose in disgust.

“We left everything alone – the archway, I mean. Figured you’d be better placed to take a look at it, now we’ve cleared out all the guards,” Bucky tells Tony, possibly the first time he’s spoken directly to him since… well, possibly ever, and Steve feels a hint of pride when Tony only nods, no snarky comments or aggression in his response whatsoever. It feels like progress between the two of them, and, after his conversation with Tony the other night, he feels hope that they can rebuild their relationship.

Greta wanders back into the living room from where she had been scraping unsuccessfully at Rogers and James’ bedroom door, trying to enter and comfort her dads. The sobbing has stopped, now, and only quite whispering takes its place. Steve can almost picture the scene behind the door; James lying pale and unresponsive amongst the pillows with a distraught Rogers curled around him, mumbling reassurances and begging him to wake up, and image makes his heart seize. He knows James will be fine, but he also knows that he would be in the same level of distress as Rogers if it was Bucky, triggered and knocked out with no telling when he will wake up, and what state he’ll be in.

Seeming a little less distressed, Greta situates herself by the front door, looking pointedly between the men in the living room as if asking _who’s going to walk me?_ With the drama and stress of the morning, no one has actually left the house yet, and Steve takes it upon himself to kill two birds with one stone. The walk will do Greta good, and it’ll give him the privacy to do what he needs to do.

Bite the bullet. Put his cards on the table. A host of other clichés.

“Bucky?” He starts nervously, reaching for Greta’s leash, “Can we take a walk?”


	19. The Talk

Steve waits nervously by the door while Bucky takes a few minutes to change out of his mission gear, more anxious than the first time he’d ever tried to kiss a girl, during one of his painfully awkward double dates with Bucky.

He thinks he knows how he feels – and how Bucky feels – and the more he thinks about it, the more sure he is. But what if he’s gotten everything wrong? What if he’s built something up in his head that isn’t real? What if Bucky doesn’t feel that way, and he ruins everything between them? If they can find a way to go home, can they still live in their cosy apartment together if Steve says what he’s about to say and Bucky is horrified by it?

When Bucky returns, he has let his hair down from the bun he wears it in during missions, and his brunette locks tumble across his cheek bones in the distinctive waves that form after leaving it tied up for too long. Forgoing his mission kit except for his trusty combat boots, he has changed into a ripped pair of grey jeans courtesy of James, and a large forest green sweater courtesy of Rogers. He looks tired, and his fingers are fidgeting nervously with the sleeves of his sweater, but his blue eyes are bright with anticipation.

Bucky’s outfit is nothing special – just a pair of battered old boots, a too-big sweatshirt and dark bags around his eyes – but it takes Steve’s breathe away when he appears in the doorway with a nervous smile. He feels bizarrely like a groom seeing his bride appear at the end of the aisle as Bucky walks down the corridor towards him and Greta, and he can only stare dumbly as they wait for him.

It’s painfully clear to him now - all the years he spent convincing himself that his fascination with Bucky’s face was simply artistic appreciation, and all the hours spent hunched over his sketch book completing sketch after sketch of Bucky’s body and pretending they were platonic anatomical studies - were years spent in denial. Looking at him now, Steve’s fingers itch for a pencil and paper, to preserve his face; the prefect combination of handsome, and although Steve suspects Bucky would never let him say it, _pretty._ Full pink lips, a strong jawline and sharp cheek bones - and big blue eyes, which have turned to look at Steve questioningly as he stares.

“Stevie? C’mon, let’s go,” He says with a tired smile, tipping his head towards the door and patting his knee for Greta to follow him as he heads out.

“Good luck,” Sam whispers quietly while Tony gives him a supportive thumbs-up behind Bucky’s back. Steve, who had honestly forgotten they were even still in the room, can only nod sharply to his friends and follow Bucky out into the clearing.

It’s warm but overcast when they finally make their way into the forest in the early afternoon. There’s a gentle rain, but it doesn’t bother either of them - or Greta, who bounds ahead excitedly when Steve unhooks her leash and lets her run free.

They’re silent as they put some distance between them and the house, and even thought it should be more awkward than ever considering the last few days they’ve had, it feels more like the companionable silence they would fall into in their apartment before they arrived in this universe. As they walk, the rain begins to pour more heavily, until it’s difficult to see where they are walking between the shadows of the trees, the curtain of rain and the twining branches that block their path.

Luckily, Bucky has had enough forethought to bring an umbrella – he always has claimed, since coming back from HYDRA, that the space where his shoulder meets his metal arm starts to hurt whenever a storm is coming. Pausing their walk, they take shelter under the canopy of a large oak, settling on an overturned log that seems just solid enough to support their weight. Bucky extends the umbrella a little so it covers both of them as they sit, and although the warm, early autumn rain doesn’t bother Steve, he’s hardly going to turn down the opportunity to snuggle up to Bucky, so he tucks into his side. Greta follows, settling close at Bucky’s heels so she is mostly covered by the large umbrella, too.

This would be the perfect time to say something. But where to start? _Why is this so fucking hard?_ Steve feels more nervous now than he had been before getting into Erskine’s machine, knowing there was just as much chance that it would tear him apart than there was of it making him stronger, and it’s stupid – he knows that even if Bucky rejected him, he would be kind about it.

No matter what HYDRA did to him or made him in to; Bucky has always, always been kind.

Instead of speaking, he makes a drastic decision, and reaches out to take Bucky’s flesh hand, intertwining their fingers as he hears Bucky’s metal hand tighten on the umbrella in shock.

Bucky freezes beside him but allows the contact, and although Steve can’t look up from where he is staring at their clasped hands and entwined fingers, he knows that Bucky’s eyes are burning holes in the side of his face. They sit like that in silence for a few seconds, before Bucky tentatively gives his hand a gentle, encouraging squeeze, which is all the reassurance he needs to start speaking.

“Buck, I’ve been so fucking stupid,” He starts, and his bluntness startles a laugh out of Bucky, one that it has been far, far too long since he’s heard. Drawing up the last of his courage, he finally raises his eyes to meet Bucky’s gaze, and his friend’s clear blue eyes staring back at him once again take his breathe away.

Bucky is looking at him beseechingly, begging him to continue with his eyes, and so he tries his best, raising his voice a little to be heard above the cacophony of rain bouncing off the leaves and branches around them.

“It’s- I don’t know where to start, with all the ways I’ve been stupid, and the ways I’ve lied to myself, and the things I’ve intentionally misunderstood about myself – and us,” He says honestly, holding Bucky’s gaze for fear that if he looks away, Bucky will simply disappear, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Try,” Bucky asks him with pleading eyes, so quietly he can barely hear him against the storm, “I think – I’m starting to think we might be on the same page here, or getting there, but I need to hear it from you. I’ve been making all these assumptions instead of just _talking_ to you, and it’s making everything more confusing. I just need to hear it, now.”

Steve can only nod at how true that is – making assumptions about how he feels, how he _should_ feel, how Bucky feels, how he would react, how they would (or wouldn’t) work together… it’s been wildly unhelpful, and has only served to make everything worse. He’s been putting words in Bucky’s mouth that he never said, and thoughts in his head that he has no way of knowing if Bucky has ever thought – and then taking these words and thoughts as fact. It’s not fair on either of them, and now, he’d like to hear how the _real_ Bucky feels, not the one that Steve has built up in his head.

“When we first met,” He starts, and it feels lame, like passionless, generic wedding vows, but he doesn’t know where else to start than at the beginning, “And you were the only person to talk to me, and help me, and try to get close to me… I thought that it was pity, for me being ill and my Ma struggling to make rent and my dad being dead, not to mention getting beat up all the damn time. _No_ , don’t argue, I know better now, but that’s how I felt.”

Bucky shoots him an argumentative look but keeps his mouth shut, allowing him to continue.

“But then you stuck around. And you kept sticking around. And slowly, I realised that this was real friendship, not because you felt sorry for me. You became this-“ Steve takes a deep breathe, breaking eye contact and looking at the blurred image of the cabin through the rain as he gathers his thoughts, “You became, just… everything to me. You were always there when I needed you, which was all the fucking time. You kept me alive, you kept me healthy, you kept me sane and happy… I never would have survived my first winter after my Ma died without you, let alone the rest of my life, or the war. And you did everything you did for me for _nothing_ in return, except my company, which wasn’t much of a prize when I was sick and cranky and lashing out. I knew then that it was more than the friendship other people had. I knew that you loved me.”

Bucky’s eyes widen, and he opens his mouth to respond, but Steve cuts him off, desperately needing to get it all out in the open now the words have finally, finally started to flow.

“I knew that we loved each other. I’ve always known that. But I didn't get that it was _love_ love. I thought - When we were growing up, people would say we were _best friends_ , that we loved each other like _brothers_ , that we were practically _family_. And I guess I just internalised that. Because anything else would have been one more thing to deal with that I didn’t need, and one more thing that could make you realise I was more trouble than I was worth,” He continues, not yet looking back at Bucky, “If there’s this perfect explanation for our relationship being handed to me, why would I seek out another explanation that could get us killed? Why would I look deeper into my feelings when those same feelings could drive you away and put us both in danger if you knew who I truly was?”

“If we had met later in life, and I had loved other people, I could have identified what I felt for you straight away. But I didn’t. I’ve never loved anyone else, Buck, not like how I love you. I thought I didn’t know what real, romantic love felt like, but it turns out I’ve been feeling it my whole damn life and just wasn’t naming it for what it was,” Steve sighs, rubbing his thumb absently over Bucky’s knuckles where their hands are still joined, “I never had to think about what that feeling was because you were always going to be by my side, no matter what form that was in, and I never had to examine our relationship because it was a constant. There’s no need to put a label on something that is never going to change.”

He hopes that Bucky is following the meandering way he is pouring out his soul, trying to justify his own stupidity and inaction after all these years, but he daren’t raise his eyes to check what expression is on Bucky’s face. Instead, he grips his hand tightly and lays his final cards on the table.

“I guess I just always felt like you were the one permanent thing in my life – and in the end, you were. More than my own skin and bones, or the world around us. All of that changed, and you never did, no matter how much they tried to bend and break you. You know I’ve never been one for god and destiny and higher powers and all that – but what is me and you finding each other in a brand new world after everything we went through, if not fate? If even time and death and armies couldn’t keep us apart, doesn’t that mean we’re supposed to be together?”

Taking a deep breathe, Steve finally summons up the last of his courage and meets Bucky’s blue eyes once again, which, to his dismay, are shining with unshed tears.

“Stevie,” Bucky says gently, his voice cracking as his bottom lip trembles in a way that Steve has only ever seen a handful of times, and he pulls his hand out of Steve’s grasp suddenly.

Steve’s heart sinks to the forest floor, fearing rejection, and he closes his eyes tightly so he doesn’t have to see the pity and disgust and sympathy play across Bucky’s face. But the gentle refusal he expects to hear never comes. Instead, soft fingers press lightly to his cheek, tilting his head towards Bucky once again.

“Look at me,” Bucky demands softly, thumb gently caressing Steve’s cheekbone, and Steve has never been able to refuse that voice anything.

When he opens his eyes once again, he only sees a blur of brown locks and pale skin as Bucky leans in close.

And then they’re kissing.

Their lips meet tentatively at first, like teenagers experimenting, and while it’s not Steve’s first kiss, it might as well be. Nothing has felt like this before – so new, so terrifying, so right, so natural – and it blows ever other experience he’s had out of the water. He presses forward, suddenly wanting more, as he threads his hand in Bucky’s thick brunette hair and Bucky’s hand slips from his cheek to cradle the back of his neck instead, fingers playing with the short, soft hair at Steve’s nape. His lips are soft but insistent as he lets Steve in, gasping into the kiss as he feels Steve’s tongue flick over his bottom lip, seeking entrance. Their bodies press tightly against each other, Bucky barely managing to maintain enough brain power to keep the umbrella over their heads as the kiss deepens.

It’s better than Steve ever could have imagined, and the last 100 years he spend doing things that weren’t kissing his best guy suddenly feel like a colossal waste of time.

When they pull back, finally needing some air, it’s reluctant, and both are giggling like schoolkids despite their age. A delicate blush has settled prettily high on Bucky’s cheeks, and stray strands of his hair are damp where the umbrella has not quite covered him, stretched as it is over Bucky, Steve and Greta. His smile is genuine and meets his eyes, and Steve thinks he’s never looked more beautiful.

“Was I better than Rogers?” Steve asks, struggling to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but Bucky only laughs.

“I don’t know. He’s got the beard – it really does it for me, actually.”

Steve huffs out a laugh of his own, rubbing his hand over the soggy fur on Greta’s face when she drops her heavy head onto his knee, wanting attention too.

“I’ve always known,” Bucky admits quietly as his own fingers join Steve’s in scratching behind Greta’s ear, “That I love you, I mean. And none of this _like brothers_ shit, either. I’ve always wanted you – in every way that you were willing to be with me.”

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” Steve asks without judgement, looking at Bucky from beneath his eyelashes.

“I was just scared, I guess,” Bucky answers, “I knew how I felt, but I was getting nothing from you to indicate you felt the same – about men, about me, about wanting something more. You mean so fucking much to me, Steve. I’d never do anything to make you uncomfortable or push you away, and the chance that my feelings would change things between us wasn’t one I was willing to take, even if it meant being miserable without you. I’d rather have you as a friend than not at all.” 

“You can have anything,” Steve tells him passionately, taking his head in both hands and pressing a fierce, possessive kiss to his forehead, “You can have all of me, in any way you want. You don’t have to be scared of anything. I love you, and I’m not going anywhere.”

It feels good to say. _I love you_. Steve thinks he could spend the rest of their lives saying it, and hearing it in return. That fact that he now knows he _will_ spend the rest of his life that way makes tears of happiness and contentment well in his eyes.

When they’re done speaking, Steve takes over umbrella holding duties so Bucky can throw his arms around Steve’s neck and press his face into the crook of his shoulder, hiding from the rest of the world. Steve wraps his other arm tightly around Bucky’s broad shoulders, and just… holds him.

The feeling of comfort having Bucky in his arms brings him – even in this strange universe that they don’t know whether they can escape from, and with a storm growing above their heads – is indescribable.

They sit in the forest, just listening to the rain and holding each other tight, until Greta starts shivering where she is curled up between their ankles. Taking pity on her, they make their way back to the cabin.

When they arrive, Greta zips past them into the warmth of the house, where the fire in already roaring and the music is playing quietly from the record player in the living room. Rogers is waiting for them by the front door, and his eyes widen as they flick down to their joined hands.

“James is awake,” He tells them with a shaky smile and red ringed eyes, “He’d like to talk to you, Buck.”

* * *

James is sitting up in bed when Bucky is finally able to let go of Steve’s hand and make his way over to the married couple’s bedroom. He looks extremely tired for someone who has been knocked out for most of the day, with dark rings around his eyes and mussed hair, but he still greets Bucky with a wide smile as he steps inside.

He gestures for Bucky to come closer, and he does so, perching on the edge of the bed closest to his parallel self.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky blurts out as soon as he has sat down, guilt tugging at him painfully, “I should never have used a trigger word on you. I know what it’s like, to have control taken from you. And that word – I know what it feels like. Like your body is shutting down completely. I shouldn’t have-“

“And what would you have done instead?” James asks him, looking amused and not at all angry like Bucky had been expecting, “Let me be triggered and controlled by them? Killed me? Walked away? There was nothing you could do except what you did, pal. You made the right choice. I would have done the same.”

“Well yeah,” Bucky replies, relief flooding through him, “We’re the same person.”

“But not quite,” James adds, “One of us is triggerable still. Steve – my Steve – just got off the phone with T’Challa and Shuri. We’re gonna head over to Wakanda as soon as possible and make a start on getting these damn words out of my head.”

Bucky squeezes his hand, knowing how stressful and at times painful the removal process can be, but beyond pleased that this last piece of James’ autonomy can be handed back to him by their friends in Wakanda.

“I should be the one apologising,” James whispers suddenly, voice croaky from disuse, “I pressured you into going with me instead of waiting for the others, and I was dismissive of your concerns about it being a set up when we got there. This whole thing would have gone a whole lot smoother if I’d listened to you.”

“This place – it’s everything I ever dreamed of. Our own patch of land, with no one to bother us or judge us or use us. Where we can just be Bucky and Steve, together. I wake up every day and I know Steve is by my side, and nothing is going to come between us, and I know that he’s _happy_. Happier than he’s ever been in his life,” James explains honestly, eyes shining with emotion, “To have HYDRA show up practically on our doorstep, threatening our life and our happiness, threatening my _husband_ and this tentative peace that he’s found – well, I think I lost it a little bit.”

“You don’t need to explain,” Bucky tells him, and it’s true. They’re the same person, after all. He can’t say he would have done anything different, “Everything worked out well in the end.”

James looks at him slyly at that, and he’s unable to keep the grin off his own face, thinking about Steve’s confession and their first kiss just moments ago in the forest. Between the rain, his best guy’s handsome face and the perfection of their kiss, it had felt like something out of a fairy-tale – so far from the nightmare that he has been living for so long that he could almost cry with happiness.

“How long have I been out?” James asks knowingly, reaching out for the alarm clock on his bedside table, “Have you and your Steve had a chance to talk?”

The way the grin is splitting Bucky’s face is answer enough for James, who grins in reply until Bucky’s smile suddenly drops and uncertainty crawls across his features.

“I’m scared,” He admits with a whisper, “He’s everything to me. I don’t want to fuck it up. I don’t want to push him too hard too fast and lose everything. And I can’t quite convince myself that it’s real – that he really feels that way, and it isn’t just the pressure from the fucked up circumstances we find ourselves in. I couldn’t bear it if he changed his mind.”

“You have to trust him, and yourself,” James tells him, meeting his eye with a stern look, “Trust that you deserve happiness, and if you let yourself, you can have it. I knew, the second you arrived here and I realised you weren’t together – you would be. There’s no universe where we don’t love each other, pal. I just know it.”

In his heart, Bucky knows it too, and despite how far he has gone to convince himself that Steve feels nothing for him, and that he should stay silent for the sake of their friendship, he thinks deep down he has always known. It’s going to take some work to convince himself that he deserves someone as perfect as Steve, and Steve almost certainly has his own issues to work on. But together, they can get through it, and come out stronger.

But first, they need to figure out how to get _home._


	20. Scenes from a Long Farewell

After dismissing Bucky, James sleeps through the rest of the day, determined to regain his strength, and adamant that tomorrow he will return to the HYDRA bunker with Tony and Rogers, to begin plotting their escape from this universe.

“It’s not that I’m trying to get rid of you,” James tells Bucky honestly from where is wrapped up in blankets like a tired assassin burrito, “But I want you to be able to start this new chapter of your life properly. At home, with your best guy.”

Bucky wants that, too.

* * *

The night is surprisingly uneventful. It’s far from the first night they’ve spent in the same bed, but it’s the first since they confessed their love for each other and became… whatever they are. Although Tony has plenty of quips about needing to sleep with ear plugs in when he sees them holding hands for the first time, in the end, he can sleep soundly. For their first night together, they’re content just to hold each other. There will be plenty of time to explore more when they are back home. To be able to rest his head on Steve’s broad chest and hear his heart beat – steady and strong, in a way it never was when they were young – is all Bucky needs for now.

The following morning, James takes Tony and Rogers to the HYDRA base, and after hours of radio silence, they come back with the whole damn archway and control panel in a trailer attached to the back of their car. James is subdued when they return, disturbed by the reminder of how close he came to losing himself at the hands (or words) of the scientists they faced, but Tony is practically vibrating with excitement.

As they all pitch in to help navigate the heavy machinery through the trees, from the truck into the clearing, it begins to feel _real_ to Bucky.

They really might be able to go home. And when they get there, he and Steve can start the rest of their lives - _together._

The machinery is far too big to get into the house, so they set it up in the clearing instead, where Tony will be able to work on it. Although the weather has dried up since yesterday, James agrees to sacrifice the tarp over his vegetable garden to protect the machinery from the rain, and Sam dons his wings once again to hook it between two large trees at the edge of the clearing, providing a roof for the archway and control panel.

Over the next hour, Rogers and James round up all the extension cables in the house and garage and lay them out across the clearing to bring power to the machinery from the cabin, under Tony’s watchful eye. From there, the genius shoos them all away, citing his need for quiet as he gets to work figuring out exactly what he’s looking at. Slowly, the others make their way back into the house - all except Greta, who refuses to leave his side, running in and out of the (thankfully disabled) archway in excitement at the new gadgets in her garden.

Once they’re inside, Sam disappears to pack away his wings, while James and Rogers head to the kitchen to get started on lunch preparations. Bucky perches on the window seat overlooking the clearing and lets out a delighted laugh as they watch Greta playfully stealing Tony’s tools and running circles around him, much to his growing frustration. When he looks up, Steve is looking directly at him with such affection in his gaze that it stops Bucky in his tracks.

“We should get a dog,” Steve tells him with hearts in his eyes, “If it means I get to see you laugh like that more often.”

The sincerity in his voice and the fact that they’re already making plans for _their_ home, _their_ family, and _their_ future, makes Bucky’s heart seize in his chest with a joy he never thought he would truly feel. Instead of answering, Bucky shoots him a beaming smile, throwing his arms around Steve’s neck and pulling him down for a kiss while ignoring the way Clint wrinkles his eyes at the public display of affection and escapes to his own room.

* * *

“How did you do it?” Steve asks later that evening when he and Rogers are alone in the kitchen, making one of their Ma’s old recipes, “Propose, I mean.”

Rogers stops cutting vegetables for long enough to look at him sharply, before going right back to slicing a carrot for the casserole they’re preparing.

“Why do you assume I proposed to him, and not the other way around?” Rogers asks, bemused, and Steve simply rolls his eyes.

“Because I’m you. We’re control freaks with no patience. How did you do it?”

As he stirs the pot of food, Rogers opens his mouth to answer, and then seems to think better of it, shaking his head.

“A little bit soon to be thinking about that, isn’t it? It’s only been a few days,” He says, sidestepping the question, but Steve only laughs.

“Not really. It’s been 100 years.”

At that, Rogers softens, but still shakes his head, denying Steve’s question.

“You know what? I’m not answering that. It feels like spoilers,” Rogers tells him, throwing a handful of herbs into their casserole, “You have to figure this out yourself, and do what’s best for you and him – not what we did. But trust me - you could propose to him in a dumpster and he’d say yes.”

* * *

Tony works on the archway for nearly 28 hours straight before Rogers and James bodily drag him into the house and force him to sleep. After a reluctant 4 hour power nap and the largest coffee Bucky has ever seen in his life, he’s back out there, tinkering away as he attempts to reverse the direction of the teleporter to take them home.

“If some HYDRA goon can figure this out, then it should be child’s play for me,” He tells them, and they can only hope he’s right.

As weird as it is, after everything they’ve gone through, Bucky trusts Tony, in this at least. Maybe it’s the knowledge that in this universe, Tony changed his mind and forgave them after seeing their love for each other, secured their amnesty, and even made him an arm. Maybe it’s seeing how much Tony misses Pepper that gets him thinking of Tony as a fully realised, emotional human being instead of a cartoon villain. Maybe it’s the way Steve has been subtly (or at least he _thinks_ he’s being subtle) encouraging Bucky and Tony to talk to each other and start to build a relationship.

Whatever it is, Bucky is amenable to it. While he had feared Tony and his wrath for a long time, and had been angry at the attempt on Steve’s life in Siberia, he had always understood where he was coming from. As much as Steve tells him that Howard’s death, and all the other blood on his hands, is not really his fault, he still did those things. He can’t blame Tony for hating him for them.

In the late evening of Tony’s second day working on the archway, Bucky brings him coffee, without any prompting from Steve.

As expected, Tony sniffs it as if suspicious it has been poisoned, but he does eventually drink it without complaint. He even says a quiet _thank you, Robocop._

If Bucky is being honest, the peace offering was more to see the happiness in Steve’s eyes at the sight of his friend and best guy getting along than it was for Tony. But progress is progress, and it feels like a step forward.

As he turns to walk away, Tony’s voice freezes him in place.

“Do you like it here?” Tony addresses him, not looking up from the machinery to make eye contact with Bucky, who frowns at the question.

“This universe?” He asks, confused, “I’d like to go home, if that’s what you mean.”

“The cabin,” Tony clarifies, still resolutely not looking at Bucky as he unscrews something that looks like it should not be unscrewed.

That stops Bucky in his tracks, too. He hasn’t really thought about where they will go when they return to their own universe. They have their little apartment in Brooklyn, and sure, it’s nice enough. But somewhere like this – tranquil and beautiful, with a safe and monitored perimeter, with miles of forest for Bucky to try and outrun his worst memories and idyllic sunsets for Steve to paint…

“I love it here,” Bucky tells Tony honestly, and he finds that it’s true. The time that they’ve been here has been incredibly stressful, but the house and grounds have bought him more peace than he would have found anywhere else.

“I don’t use it much,” Tony says with a shrug and an air of forced casualness, pausing his tinkering but not looking up from the control panel, “Maybe, when we get back – maybe you guys can just have it. It’s a little _Little House on the Prairie_ for my tastes, anyway.”

His body language and tone are carefully constructed to suggest that his offer doesn’t really mean anything – but they both know that it does. Growing up dirt poor in New York, he and Steve had never imagined they could own their own place. Let alone a house. Let alone a house like this, where they could be together freely.

It’s more than just a house – it’s a base to begin the rest of their lives from.

“Tony, I-“ Bucky gasps, overwhelmed and unsure how he is going to express the extent of his gratitude – but Tony cuts him off before he can try.

“It’s not a big deal,” Tony blurts out quickly, their relationship still too fragile for an emotional interaction, “Don’t make it weird.”

He goes back to his tinkering almost immediately, awkwardness radiating from him, and just this once, Bucky takes pity on him. He simply nods sharply, turning on his heel and walking back into the cabin to share the news with Steve as Tony’s shoulder’s sag with relief.

Maybe he had misjudged Tony, just as Tony had misjudged him. Maybe, when they get home – maybe they can even be _friends._

* * *

It’s a day later when it happens. Clint and James are betting against each other on the shooting range outside, while Sam and Rogers are baking in the kitchen, elbow deep in flour and laughing about something Bucky didn’t quite catch. Nearby, Bucky and Steve are in the living room, watching some old movie that he can barely keep his attention on while Steve’s fingers card gently through his hair where he has planted his head in Steve’s lap.

Tony, who had insisted that none of them were really intelligent enough to help him, is still outside, working diligently on the archway, when the clanging of his tools against metal and his frustrated grumbling suddenly ceases.

He appears in the doorway moments later, startling the two super soldiers with the speed of his entry and the grin splitting his face.

“I think – I think I’ve done it. I think we can go home.”

* * *

It doesn’t take long to pack – after all, they only came with the clothes on their backs and a handful of weapons. When they return to the clearing with their kit and weapons in hands, Rogers, James and Greta are waiting for them.

“We’ve been thinking,” Rogers tells them, placing a hand on James’ lower back as the whole group walk towards the archway together, “We’re going to call Tony – _our_ Tony – when this is all done, and tell him what happened. The archway needs to be stored somewhere safe – like Stark Tower.”

“Your Tony tells us that there’s a way to keep it on, at a low level of transmission – enough for communications to pass through, but not people,” James adds, “Don’t worry, we’re not planning on sending anyone through to your universe – I think we’ve all had quite enough of inter-dimensional travel for now –“

“But if you ever need us-“ Rogers butts in,

“Just send us a sign. We’ll be there,” James finishes, and his smile is sincere.

By now, they’ve reached the archway, which is still lacking the crackling, swirling blue energy that they saw in their own universe. At the moment, it looks like nothing more than a twisted hunk of metal. Bucky forces himself to stamp down the little voice that says _this isn’t going to work, you’re stuck here forever_ and instead looks to Tony as he works.

Tony looks almost nervous as he fidgets with the control panel, flicking a few switches here and there to prepare the device.

“Once I turn it on, there’s no turning back. We’ll be pulled through, and Rogers, you’ll need to cut the power from the house to shut it down – you can’t come anywhere near this thing or you’ll be pulled in, too,” Tony tells them, and waits for Rogers to nod his understanding before continuing, “There’s no guarantee this will work, just so you know. It could send us to a whole new universe instead of our own. It could send us to the vacuum of space. We could just cease to exist as soon as we go through. I know you don’t have a lot of faith in me-”

“I trust you,” Bucky interrupts, shocking all of them, but himself most of all. Once it’s out there, he finds he believes it, and nods to himself as he repeats it, “I trust you on this.”

If it were anyone else but Tony Stark, Bucky would say that he looked genuinely _moved_ , as Tony just nods sharply and looks away, returning his attention to the control panel in front of him.

“It’s a chance we have to take,” Steve declares firmly as Sam and Clint nod in agreement, “Rogers, James, you’ve been good to us. But we can’t stay here forever. We need to go home.”

It’s bittersweet, as Tony make the final preparations to the machine. It’s time for them to leave, and the next chapter of their lives is calling to them, but saying goodbye to Rogers, James and Greta is surprisingly difficult.

Bucky kneels down to hug Greta tight, her tail wagging with joy as she fails to grasp that she will soon go back down to two dads instead of the four she has become accustomed to, and he whispers a quiet goodbye in her floppy ears as Steve does the same moments later. When he climbs to his feet, Rogers is waiting for him with open arms which pull him into the man's broad chest.

“Sorry if I messed things up for you,” He tells Bucky as they hug, “With the – the kiss.”

He’s blushing adorably, and Bucky can only laugh, cupping his cheek and pressing a quick kiss to his lips that has James giggling and Steve letting out an affectionately annoyed _hey!_

“You didn’t mess up anything, pal. The opposite, really. Everything’s worked out well for us.”

Beside him, James has pulled Steve into a hug of his own, whispering “You’re gonna treat me right, right?” in his ear with a mischievous and ever so slightly threatening grin, which gets mumbled assurances that Bucky can’t quite hear in return.

He doesn’t need to hear them. He knows that Steve loves him, and will always treat him right.

When James and Steve are done, Steve moves to say goodbye to Rogers while James approaches Bucky. For a second, they just look at each other, unspoken words passing between them that no one else will truly understand. They both surge together into an emotional hug at the same time, squeezing each other tightly before reluctantly parting.

“I’ve always hated myself,” Bucky tells James honestly when he finds the words, “Especially after what HYDRA turned me in to. But… you’re not half bad, actually.”

James laughs lightly, but there’s a serious look in his eyes as he claps Bucky on the shoulder.

“Remember that. Remember that you’re a good person, and you deserve good things. And when things get bad, and you really _can’t_ think about yourself like that – think of me. Treat yourself how you would want me to be treated. Please, pal.”

A little overwhelmed, Bucky can only nod, pulling James into another quick hug before he steps back.

“Thank you,” Steve tells their parallel selves sincerely, voice a little croaky and blinking back tears of gratitude, “For everything you’ve done for us.”

The unspoken words are plain to everyone in the clearing. _Thank you, for showing us that we could be together. Thank you for giving us our future._

The others say their goodbyes to James and Rogers, too, and if Clint gets a little teary-eyed saying goodbye to Greta, no one comments on it.

At Tony’s direction, their parallel selves move back, retreating to where Tony indicates they’ll be safe from the archway’s pull, and Rogers puts one hand firmly on Greta’s collar to stop her running after them as he throws the other around James’ shoulders, pulling him into his side. Bucky takes one final look at them, this little family and their beautiful cabin, and then turns towards Steve and the others, a little family all of his own.

A buzz of electricity sparks around the archway, and a buzz of anxiety sparks inside Bucky, but it’s quickly quelled by the comforting feeling of Steve’s fingers interlacing with his own.

As Tony makes the final preparations, he moves around to the back of the control panel, where he can reach over and flick the switch while remaining close enough to the archway to be pulled through.

As he does so, Bucky realises that it doesn’t matter if this portal takes them home. Where ever they end up, he and Steve will be together, and that’s all that matters.

“Ready?” Tony asks them hesitantly, fingers on the edge of the switch, ready to ignite the archway with the energy that will send them hurtling into the unknown.

As Sam and Clint voice their assent, Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand in his own and searches his lovers face for any hint of hesitation, not willing to go anywhere unless they’re going together.

“Yeah,” Bucky answers with a smile that finally, finally reaches his eyes, as he squeezes Steve’s hand right back, “Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is! I didn’t mean for this to be a cliffhanger or anything so let me be clear: they do get home, they do move into the cabin, and they do adopt a rescue dog of their own (a golden retriever). Steve brings the puppy home to surprise Bucky – with a Wakandan crafted black and gold engagement ring attached to the puppy’s little bow tie.
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic, I will shamelessly self promote my magnum opus [All These Riots of Broken Sound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19266574/chapters/45819442), which was a labour of love and my favourite thing that I’ve written. Don’t be put off by the scary tags and the angst, it’s more light hearted than it seems with some more humour and softness than I managed to fit in the first half of this one. Thank you so much for sticking with me on this one and all the kudos/comments. One day I will learn to write the full fic before posting the first chapter so I’m not playing catch up, but today is not that day. All of your support was very encouraging for getting it finished on time, so thank you!


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